
Class ^2JBJ3i_ 



CDKfRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO - DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




DR. CHARLES SAUNDERS, 
The discoverer and introducer of ]\Iarquis Wheat. 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

INCLUDING 

THE DISCOVERY AND INTRODUCTION OF MARQUIS 

WHEAT, THE EARLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 

IN MANITOBA, WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA, THE 

ORIGIN OF RED BOBS AND KITCHENER, AND 

THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 



BY 

A. H. REGINALD BULLER 

B.Sc. (London); D.Sc. (Birmingham); Ph.D. (Leipzig); F.R.S.C. 
Professor of Botany at the University of Manitoba 



WITH FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS 
IN THE TEXT 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY; 
1919 

All rights reserved 



*5'>^ 



COPTKIGHT. 1919 

By the macmillan company 



Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1919. 



"fC 24 1313 



(g)C,i.A559165 



k 



History . . . celebrates the battlefields whereon we 
meet our deaths but scorns to speak of the plowed fields 
whereby we thrive; it knows the names of the king's 
bastards J but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. That is 
the way of human folly, 

J. Heitki Fabke. 



PEEFACE 

Marquis Wheat is one of the most valuable food plants 
in the world. In the year 1917 upwards of 250,000,000 
bushels of it were raised in E'orth America, and in 1918 
upwards of 300,000,000 bushels; and, owing to its high 
yield per acre, it was an important factor in assisting the 
Allies to overcome the food crisis in the darkest period 
of the war. The whole of the Marquis Wheat at present in 
existence originated from a single grain of wheat planted 
in an experimental plot at Ottawa by Dr. Charles E. 
Saunders so recently as the spring of 1903. 

I have written this book, in the first place, to do justice 
to Dr. Charles E. Saunders as the discoverer and intro- 
ducer of Marquis, and, in the second place, to put on record 
facts which have an important bearing upon the agricul- 
tural progress of both Canada and the United States. I 
undertook the task of penning the history of Marquis with 
all the more pleasure on account of the fact that I have 
lived for nearly fifteen years at Winnipeg, in the center 
of the great spring-wheat region of E'orth America, and 
for the reason that, as a Canadian citizen, I have shared 
in the general prosperity that has come to the Dominion 
through the development of her wheat-lands. 

The heart of what I wish to say is contained in the 
Third Chapter on The Discovery and Introduction of 
Marquis Wheat; but, for the purpose of making the book 
more comprehensive and of supplying information for 
which I feel there is a considerable demand, I have written 
two preliminary chapters, called respectively : The Early 



viii PREFACE 

History of Wheat-growing in Mcmitoha, and Wheat in 
Western Canada, and two concluding cliapters upon The 
Origin of Bed Bohs and Kitchener and The Wild Wheat 
of Palestine. 

In order to collect the data embodied in the following 
pages I have engaged in an extensive correspondence, have 
made many inquiries at Winnipeg, and have visited Ot- 
tawa, Brandon, Indian Head, Saskatoon, and Eosthern in 
Canada, and Fargo, Minneapolis, and St. Paul in the 
United States. I have also investigated personally the 
sampling and grading of wheat at Winnipeg, of which an 
account is given in the second Chapter. To the numerous 
cerealists, grain growers, grain merchants, millers, statis- 
ticians and others who have assisted me with information 
and criticism, I here wish to express my hearty thanks. 

A. H. Regit^ald Eut^lee, 
Winnipeg, April 10, 1919. 



CONTENTS 



Preface vii 

CHAPTER I 

The Early History of Wheat-Growing in Manitoba 

SECTION ^_^ PAGE 

I The First Wheat Crops in Western Canada . . 1 

II Troubles with the North- West Company . . 4 

III Visit of Lord Selkirk . . ^ 8 

IV The Eirst Farms . . . . , 9 

V The Plague of Grasshoppers 10 

VI New Seed- Wheat from the United States . . 12 

Vri The Hour-Glass 14 

VIII The Census of 1822 16 

IX Milling Operations 16 

X The Mice 18 

XI The Great Flood 18 

XII Prosperity in 1829 20 

XIII The Eed River Flour 21 

XIV Windmills 24 

XV The Experimental Farms 24 

XVI The Bloody Flux . , 26 

XVII The Census of 1849 -27 

XVIII Another Plague of Grasshoppers 28 

XIX State of the Settlement in 1870 29 

XX Effect of the Revolution in the Milling Industry 30 

XXI The St. Paul Railway 32 

XXII The Canadian Pacific Railway 33 

CHAPTER II 

Wheat in Western Canada 

I Some Crop Statistics 35 

II Wheat Growing 41 



X CONTENTS 

SECTION PAGE 

ni The Great Wheat Funnel 49 

IV The Hudson Bay Railway 51 

Y The Shipment of Bulk Wheat through the 

Panama Canal 52 

. VI Elevators 53 

Vn The Loading Platform 54 

VIII The Old Flat Warehouse 56 

IX The Country Elevator 56 

X Box-Cars 57 

XI Terminal Elevators 60 

XII Lake Steamers -.65 

XIII The Lake Shippers' Clearance Association . . 66 

XIV The Canada Grain Act 68 

XV The Sample Market 69 

XVI The Grades of Grain . 70 

XVII The Grading of Grain 75 

XVIII Inspection at Terminal Elevators 93 

XIX Reinspection 96 

XX Weighing Wheat 98 

XXI Warehouse Receipts, Registration, and Stock- 
taking 100 

XXII The Dominion Grain Research Laboratory . . 102 

XXIII The Winnipeg Grain Exchange 105 

XXIV The Geographical Position of the Grain Ex- 

change 108 

XXV The Grain Exchange Clearing House . . .109 

XXVI The Wheat Pit 116 

XXVII The Effect of the War on the Grain Trade . . 118 

XXVIII Financing the Crop Movement 130 

XXIX The Flour Mills of Western Canada .... 134 

XXX Recent ImiDrovements in the Conditions of Farm 

Life 138 

XXXI The Agrarian Movement 141 



CHAPTER in 
The Discovery and Introduction of Marquis Wheat 

I Introduction 144 

II Dr. William Saunders and His Assistants . . 144 
III The Selection of Marquis by Dr. Charles E. 

Saunders . 151 



CONTENTS XI 

SECTION PAGE 

IV The New Wheat is Named 154 

V The Qualities of Marquis are Investigated . . 154 

VI The Introduction of Marquis into Western 

Canada 157 

VII The Introduction of Marquis into the United 

States of America . 158 

VIII General Description of Marquis 170 

IX Prizes Awarded to Marquis 172 

X' Long-Period Tests for Earliness and Yield . . 174 

XI Earliness and the Gain of Working-time . . 175 

XII Earliness and Storms 176 

XIII Earliness and Rust 176 

XIV Earliness and Frost 180 

XV Marquis, Ruby, and Prelude 183 

XVI The Advance Toward the North of the Belts of 

Wheat and Corn 187 

XVII The Yield of Marquis in Western Canada . . 190 

XVIII The Yield of Marquis in the United States . . 192 

XIX The Favorable Grading of Marquis . . . .196 

XX Resistance to Shelling 197 

XXI Milling and Baking Qualities 198 

XXII The Origin of Hard Red Calcutta .... 204 

XXIII The Origin of Red Fife 206 

XXIV Marquis as the Off-spring of Red Fife and Hard 

Red Calcutta 218 

XXV The Future of Marquis 223 

XXVI Saunders and Burbank 228 

XXVII Burbank's Quality Wheat as a Possible Com- 
petitor of Marquis 233 

XX Vm Biographical Sketch of the Discoverer of 

Marquis 237 

XXIX Governing Bodies and Scientific Research . . 238 

XXX Other Work of Dr. Saunders 239 

XXXI The Crop Value of Marquis in Canada and the 

United States .243 

XXXII The Increased Wealth Brought by Marquis to 

the United States 246 

XXXIII The Increased Wealth Brought by Marquis to 

Canada 252 

XXIV Summary 257 



Xil CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 
The Origin of Red Bobs and Kitchener 

SECTION PAGE 

I Introduction 259 

11 Origin of Bobs 259 

in Importance of the Color of Wheat Kernels . . 260 

IV The Discovery of Red Bobs by Mr. Seager 

Wheeler 262 

V Red Bobs the Product of a Natural Cross . . 264 
VT The Selection, Multiplication, and Distribution 

of Red Bobs '.268 

Vll Red Bobs at the University of Saskatchewan. 270 

VIII Description of Red Bobs 272 

IX A Visit to Mr. Wheeler's Farm 272 

X A Biographical Note 274 

XI Kitchener 275 

CHAPTER V 

The Wild Wheat of Palestine 

I The Importance and Antiquity of Agriculture . 278 

II The Antiquity and Origin of Wheat . . . .279 

III The Prototypes of Cereals 285 

IV Kornicke's Discovery in a Herbarium . . . 286 

V Rediscovery of the Wild Wheat by Aaronsohn . 286 
VI The Botanical Classification of Wheats . . .292 

VII The Brittle Rachis of the Primitive Cereals . 293 
VIII Cultivated Wheats with a Brittle Rachis . . 295 
IX Einkorn and Its Prototype Distinct from Other 

Wheats 296 

X Emmer the Only Possible Prototype of True 

Wheat 298 

XI Cross-fertilization 299 

XII Conclusion 306 

Index 307 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FAGS 

Frontispiece. Dr. Charles Saunders. 

1. Map showing Lord Selkirk's grant of land, the route of 

the Selkirk Settlers, and the boundaries of Manitoba 3 

2. Hebrides women grinding with the quern or hand-mill 17 

3. Combined acreage of spring-sown and autumn-sown 

wheat in western Canada 37 

4. Breaking the virgin prairie of Manitoba with a 

four-horse plow (facing page) 44 

5. Cutting the wheat crop with a four-horse binder (facing 

page) . . 4S 

6. Wheat in the stook in western Canada (facing page) 46-^ 

7. Threshing wheat on the prairie (facing page) . . . 47 

8. Eastbound movement of western Canadian wheat in 

the calendar year 1913 50 

9. Country elevators at a railway station, rear view (fac- 

ing page) 56 

10. View of Canadian Pacific Eailway yards in the busy 

season at Winnipeg (facing page) 57 

11. The Dominion Government Terminal Elevator at Port 

Arthur (facing page) 62 

12. Unloading a car of grain (facing page) 63 

13. Design for the Dominion Government elevators at 

Saskatoon, Moosejaw, and Calgary (facing page) . 64 

14. A gang ready to start the work of sampling (facing 

page) 80 

15. Probing the grain, showing the sampler with his probe 

or stabber (facing page) 81 

16. Emptying the grain upon the cloth through the handle 

of the stabber as practiced until recently (facing 

86 

xiii 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

17. The inspectors at work in Winnipeg (facing page) . . 87 

18. Weighing the grain to determine its weight per bushel 

and setting the dockage (facing page) 88 

19. Taking a sample from a belt in a tunnel of the Domin- 

ion Government Terminal Elevator (facing page) 94 

20. Taking a sample on a steamer loading at the Dominion 

Government Terminal Elevator (facing page) . . 95 

21. The late Dr. William Saunders (facing page) . . . 146 

22. A head of Marquis (facing page) 152 

23. Small plots of cereals with peas in the foreground at the 

Central Experimental Farm (facing page) . . . 153 

24. Test plots of cereals at the Central Experimental Farm 

(facing page) 156 

25. Marquis Wheat in the Banner Season of 1915 (facing 

page) 157 

26. Cutting Marquis Wheat at the Experimental Farm, 

Brandon, Manitoba (facing page) 160 

27. Marquis wheat in stook at Brandon (facing page) . . 161 

28. Reference map for the United States 163 

29. Spike of Marquis Wheat compared with spikes of Min- 

nesota standard varieties (facing page) .... 166 

30. Kernels of Marquis Wheat compared with kernels of 

Minnesota standard varieties (facing page) . . . 166 

31. Cross-sections of Wheat Kernels. Marquis compared 

with Minnesota standard varieties (facing page) . . 171 

32. Prelude on the left and Marquis on the right, sown at 

the same time, showing relative earliness of Prelude 

in heading out (facing page) 184 

33. Normal loaves from three varieties of wheat and one of 

rye, showing characteristic differences in loaf vol- 
ume (facing page) 200 

34. Cereal and forage crops building at the Central Experi- 

mental Farm, Ottawa (facing page) 201 

35. Kneading table and cupboard where the dough is put to 

rise in the testing of new wheats for bread-making 
at the Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa (facing 
page) 202 

36. Dr. Charles Saunders in a field of Marquis wheat (fac- 

ing page) 236 




/> 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv 

PAGE 

37. Small plots of cereals, new cross-bred varieties, and 

new selections at the Central Experimental Farm, 
Ottawa (facing page) 238 

38. Selected Manchurian barley at the Experimental Farm, 

Indian Head, Saskatchewan (facing page) . . . 239 

39. Dr. Charles Saunders crossing wheats at the Central 

Experimental Farm, Ottawa (facing page) . . . 240 

40. Liberty oats (hulless), August, 1918 (facing page) . . 241 

41. Typical heads of Bed Bobs wheat (facing page) . . 262 

42. Mr. Seager Wheeler in a plot of wheat at Rosthern, 

Saskatchewan (facing page) ...*...• 272 

43. Demeter enthroned 281 

44. View of Me j del esh Schems, on the slopes of Mjount 

Hermon, where Wild Wheat was found (facing page) 288 

45. Heads of an ordinary form of the Wild Wheat of Pales- 

tine as grown at Bard, California (facing page) . 289 

46. Wheat Kernels. A, Wild Wheat showing usual size; 

B, large-seeded variation of Wild Wheat; C, Sonora 
wheat commonly grown in the same locality at Bard, 
California (facing page) 290 

47. Classes of Wheat; Wheat, Durum, Club (facing page) 291 

48. Classes of Wheat; Poulard, Polish, Spelt, Einkorn, 

Wild Wheat of Palestine (facing page) .... 294 

49. Classes of Wheat; Bobs, White Fife, Taylor's Wonder, 

and Emmer (facing page) 295 

50. Head of a large-seeded variation of the Wild Wheat 

(Triticum. hermonis) with the spikelets falling apart 
(facing page) 298 



I 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

CHAPTEE I 

The Eaely Histoky of Wheat-Orowing in Manitoba 

I. The First Wheat Crops in Western Canada 

The earliest attempts at the cultivation of wheat in 
western Canada are associated with the vicissitudes of the 
Selkirk settlers and date from the year 1812. This little 
band of pioneers was sent out from Scotland by Lord Sel- 
kirk, via York Factory, to colonize 116,000 square miles 
of territory granted him by the Hudson's Bay Company. 
An advanced party of twenty-two men under the direction 
of Miles Macdonell arrived at the junction of the Red and 
Assiniboine rivers on August 30, 1812 ; and there they 
founded the Red River Settlement.^ To make provision 
for the future, they at once began to turn up the sod ; and 
part of the breaking was sown with winter wheat brought 
from their native land. Some spring wheat having the 
same origin was also sown early in 1813. In the fall of 
that year, the settlers, whose numbers by this time had 
increased to nearly one hundred, were dismayed to find 
that the wheat harvest was a total failure.^ There was 

1 Cf. Chester Martin, Lord Selkirk's Work in Canada, Oxford, 1916, 
p. 43. 

2 Governor Miles Macdonell in a letter to Lord Selkirk dated 
July 17, 1813, states that: "Winter wheat being late-sown has 
totally failed as also the summer wheat, pease, and English barley." 
Selkirk Papers, p. 788. 

For this and the other references to the Selkirk Papers which 
are unpublished and contained within the Archives Building at Ot- 

1 



2 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

nothing to be done but to try again; but again Fortune 
refused to smile upon the newcomers, and tbe crop of 1814 
was as bad as its predecessor.^ But Scotch persistency 
was to win in the end, for the third attempt at wheat-grow- 
ing, made in 1815, was eventually brought to a successful 
conclusion. 

The failure of the first two crops of wheat was due 
partly to the fact that the earliest settlers to arrive at the 
Red River were crofters who knew more of fishing than of 
farming, and partly to the absence of adequate farm im- 
plements. There was not a plow in the whole colony, the 
one harrow was incomplete and could not be used, and all 
the labor of breaking up and working over the tough 
prairie sod had to be done with the hoe.* The Indians 
looked on with surprise and amazement at the man with 
the hoe seeking to gain a sustenance from the soil, and to 
show his contempt for such work nicknamed the colonists 
" Jardiniers.'' ^ 

The fertility of the soil along the banks of the Red River 
was doubtless just as great when the colony was founded 
as it is to-day. Although the cereals of 1813 and 1814 
failed, other crops, such as potatoes and turnips, did well 
from the first. Miles Macdonell, writing in the winter of 
1813-1814 and telling of the harvest in the previous year, 
says ^ : "I had five or six hundred kegs of potatoes and 

tawa, I am indebted to my colleague, Professor Chester Martin, who 
kindly gave me access to the notes which he made when studying 
the original documents. 

^lUd. July 25, 1814. Macdonell says: "Wheat, pease, beans, 
Indian corn, rye, and hemp entirely failed." Selkirk Papers, p. 
1183. 

4G. Bryce, The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists, 
Winnipeg, 1909, pp. 87-88. 

5 Hid., pp. 20-21. 

6 Miles Macdonell in a letter to Auld, February 4, 1814, Selkirk 
Papers. 



EARLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 




Boundary rf Manitoba 
Lord SelKlrte Grant •• 
Goute of the SeUdrk Settlers lBU-15 



Fig. 1. Map showing Lord Selkirk's grant of land, the route of 
the Selkirk settlers, 1811-15, and the present boundaries of the Prov- 
ince of Manitoba. 



4: ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

some of the people who cultivated for themselves had re- 
turns of at least fifty for potatoes." The turnips v^ere " of 
extraordinary size " ; but of the wheat, barley, and rye 
there was nothing good to report, for "- the grain was 
choked up with weeds." ^ The choking of the grain with 
weeds was probably due either to impure seed or to inex- 
perienced labor. It is interesting to note that the weed 
nuisance which the weed inspectors and farmers of Mani- 
toba are to-day so vigorously combating, should have made 
its appearance over a century ago as soon as the virgin 
soil was turned into farm land. 

One of the settlers appears to have used his hoe to greater 
advantage than his fellows, for the story goes that in 1813 
from four quarts of seed-wheat obtained from Fort Alex- 
ander, a trading post on the Winnipeg River, he reaped 
twelve and a half bushels or an increase of one hundred- 
fold.^ It is safe to say that an increase of one hundredfold 
in wheat is unknown in the experience of the Manitoban 
farmer at the present day, and it may be that the tradition 
of the high yield of twelve and a half bushels from one- 
eighth of a bushel contains an imaginary element. 

The first harvests stood in danger from the air, for each 
autumn flocks of birds, including the now extinct Pas- 
senger Pigeon, settled in the fields and considerably dimin- 
ished even such small crops as had been produced.^ 

II. Troubles with the North-West Company 
The Eed Piver settlers, in the first few years of their 

7 lUd. 

8 A. Ross, The Red River Settlement, London, 1856, pp. 23-24. 
This incident is said by Ross, who came to the colony in 1825, to 
have happened in 1813 but this may be an error in chronology, for 
Miles Macdonell (vide a previous footnote) definitely reported in 
1813 that both the winter and the spring wheat totally failed. 

9 IMd., p. 24. Dr. C. N. Bell, who came to Winnipeg nearly fifty 



EARLY HISTOEY OF WHEAT-GROWING 5 

history, had not merely to struggle with E'ature to provide 
themselves with their daily bread but also with their fellow 
men. The Xorth-West Company which, as fur traders, 
was the great rival of the Hudson's Bay Company, resented 
the establishment of a civilized community in the heart of 
the Indian country : firstly, because it was planted directly 
across their main line of communication between the 
JSTorth-West and Montreal and, secondly, because it was 
situated on the very plains from which they drew their 
supplies of pemmican for their voyages from Fort William 
to the posts of the fur trappers. The Company feared 
that the Settlement might eventually destroy the fur trade, 
and they therefore determined to destroy the Settlement. ^^ 
In the spring of 1815, the Selkirk settlers sowed their 
wheat and barley ; but many were the hardships to be borne 
before the crops could be reaped. In June, the J^orth- 
Westers with their half-breed adherents overawed the 
colonists by a show of force. They trampled upon the 
crops, stole the horses, and burnt Tort Douglas, the colony 
mill, the stables and barns to the ground ; and Miles Mac- 
donell, the Governor of the colony, surrendered himself as 
a prisoner. Most of the settlers left in IN'orth-West canoes 
for Upper Canada, and thirteen families made their way 
up Lake Winnipeg to Jack Eiver and settled at a place 
now known as E'orway House. John McLeod and three 
others, however, succeeded in weathering the storm and re- 
mained at the Forks. They stored what property they 
could in a single log-house and stoutly defended themselves 
with a three-pounder cannon fed with lengths of chain ob- 
tained from the adjoining blacksmith's shop. Their half- 
years ago, has informed me that he used to shoot Passenger Pigeons 
on the banks of the Red River where the Winnipeg Grain Exchange 
is now situated. 

10 Cf. Donald Gunn, Report from the Select Committee on the Hud- 
son's Bay Company, 1857, p. 382. 



6 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

breed assailants, who were on horseback, could not face this 
piece of artillery and soon desisted from their attacks. In 
the end, McLeod and his little garrison were left in peace 
to care for the crops and prepare for the return of their 
fr lends. ^^ 

Colin Eobertson, in charge of an expedition sent out by 
Lord Selkirk from Montreal, arrived at the Eed Eiver a 
few weeks after the expulsion of the colonists. On learn- 
ing what had happened, he immediately pushed up Lake 
Winnipeg to the Jack Eiver, persuaded the settlers to 
return, and brought them back in triumph. They were 
delighted to find that, during their absence, the crops had 
made good progress ; and within a few weeks the first suc- 
cessful harvest was duly gathered in. 

The new Governor, Eobert Semple, who had been sent 
out from Scotland by the Hudson Bay route, arrived at 
the Eed Eiver Settlement on ^N^ovember 3, 1815. On 
finding that there were one hundred and twenty persons 
committed to his care, he at once began to feel anxious 
about the food-supply for the winter. Straightway he 
went to the granary where a rapid inspection revealed that 
the stores of grain consisted of from 12 to 14 stacks of 
wheat and barley. Would this satisfy the needs of the 
settlers and keep famine from their doors until the next 
harvest ? A resort to mathematics could alone settle the 
question. Taking each stack as representing 50 bushels 
each, he calculated that he had 400 bushels of wheat plus 
200 bushels of barley. Erom these 600 bushels he de- 
ducted 40 for spring seed and so had 560 left. Counting 
50 pounds to the bushel, he calculated that the grain which 
could be used as food amounted to 28,000 pounds. He 
then reckoned that 120 persons at 2 pounds per day would 

11 Chester Martin, loc. cit., pp. 85-89; also G. Bryce, loc. cit., p. 
105. 



EAKLY HISTOKY OF WHEAT-GROWING 7 

consume 240 pounds per day, and that this was equal to 
7,200 pounds per month or 28,800 pounds for 4 months — ■ 
an amount of grain but little more than the 28,000 pounds 
he actually had at his disposal. And so the Settlement 
would be free from the trials of hunger throughout the 
winter of 1815-16. " How was my heart relieved," writes 
Semple to Lord Selkirk, ^' when I arrived at the end of this 
simple calculation which I tried again and again for fear 
of a mistake." ^^ 

In the spring of 1816 the settlers sowed the forty bushels 
of seed wheat and seed barley which had been saved from 
the crop of the previous year, but alas for their hopes of 
harvest ! Within a few short weeks, when every field was 
putting on its summer garb of green, the colony was to be 
broken up once more, and a goodly number of the settlers 
were to find their graves. The quarrel between the rival 
Companies came to such a pass that, on June 19, a bloody 
combat took place between their rival forces. A boy on the 
watch-tower of Fort Douglas sighted a large gathering of 
hostile half-breeds ; and Governor Semple and about thirty 
of his men went out to meet them. At a spot known as 
Seven Oaks, a few miles north of Winnipeg near the Red 
River, the two parties came together. The half-breeds 
were painted and disguised. Hot words were exchanged, 
a shot was fired, and in the fight which followed Governor 
Semple and twenty of his men were left dead upon the 
field.^^ The rest of the settlers in bereavement and despair 
made their way up Lake Winnipeg, and, after a long and 
wearisome journey, again took up their abode at Jack 
River. ^^ The I^orth- Westers occupied Fort Douglas until 

12 Letter of Governor Semple to Lord Selkirk, Dee. 20, 1815, Sel- 
kirk Papers, p. 2721. 

13(7/. Chester Martin, loc. cit., pp. 110-112. 

14 John Macoun, Manitoba and the Great North-West, Guelph, 1882, 
p. 437. 



8 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the end of the year; and, after this second expulsion, no 
colonist was permitted to remain to gather in the crops. 

Early in 1817, in the depth of winter, a force sent from 
Tort William hy Lord Selkirk wrested Fort Douglas from 
the ISTorth-West Company. A surprise attack was made 
in the dead of night : the walls were scaled, and the sixteen 
men within were all made prisoners. When daylight 
came, the flag of the Hudson's Bay Company was again 
hoisted on the staff. ^^ With the arrival of spring, an ex- 
press canoe was dispatched to Jack River with the news 
that Fort Douglas had heen taken. The settlers were per- 
suaded to return, and, in the hope that peace might finally 
be established, resumed their agricultural pursuits. How- 
ever, the facilities for tilling the soil were extremely lim- 
ited and it was still necessary to use the hoe in place of 
the plow.-^^ Wheat was sown although late in the year 
and, owing to its scarcity, in small quantity. It grew well 
but, in the autumn, the crop was almost ruined by a violent 
hurricane. So short of cereals were the colonists during 
the winter of 1817-18 that they had to rely upon the 
buffalo as a chief source of food.^'^ 

III. Visit of Lord Selkirk 

Lord Selkirk, who was an experienced agriculturist, ar- 
rived at the Settlement in the summer of 1817, and for 
four months exercised a wise and generous supervision over 
its affairs. ^^ His heart was in this work, for he had great 
visions of the future. His belief in the possibilities of the 
western prairie-land he once expressed in a remarkable 
prophecy : '^ It is a very moderate calculation to say that 

15 Chester Martin, loc. cit., p. 127. 

16 John Macoun, loc. cit., p. 437. 

17 Chester Martin, loc. cit., p. 140. 
i&IUd., p. 133. 



EAKLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 9 

if these regions were occupied by an industrious popula- 
tion, they might afford ample means of subsistence for 
thirty millions of British subjects." ^^ So anxious was 
Lord Selkirk to encourage agriculture that before his ar- 
rival, in 1815, he had authorized Semple and Robertson 
to offer on his behalf a prize of £50 to the farmer who 
should raise the largest quantity of grain in proportion to 
the number of hands employed. ^^ 

Lord Selkirk left the Settlement on September 9, 1817, 
for Montreal in order to answer charges brought against 
him at the instigation of the E'orth-West Company. The 
litigation in which he became involved affected his health, 
which he attempted to recover by a visit to Pau in Erance. 
There his end came on April 8, 1820 ; and the man whose 
indomitable spirit caused the sowing of the first fields of 
wheat in western Canada and who, with the insight of a 
seer, foresaw the present and the future agricultural pros- 
perity of the far-spreading prairie-land, now lies buried 
in a French graveyard. The l^orth-West Company and 
the Hudson's Bay Company settled their differences by 
am'algamation in 1821, a year after Lord Selkirk's death.^^ 

IV. The First Farms 

The Eed Eiver Settlement, in the first few years of its 
existence, concentrated its farming operations in what is 
to-day known as the municipality of Kildonan. It was 
arranged that each settler should purchase one hundred 
acres of land at ^yq shillings an acre, but Lord Selkirk 
relinquished his claim to payment, when he visited the 

19 lUd., p. 185. 

20 Selkirk to Semple and Robertson, letter written December 18, 
1815, Selkirk Papers. 

21 Chester Martin, Lord Selkirk's Work in Canada, Oxford, 1916, 
p. 165. 



10 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

colony in 1817, in order to help the settlers who had suf- 
fered so much in the two previous years. For the pur- 
pose of giving each farmer access to the main highway — 
the Red Eiver — • and to secure the advantage of compact- 
ness for the colony as a whole, the farms were all made 
long and narrow with one end fronting on the water, and 
were placed side by side in a parallel series. Lord Selkirk 
thus describes twenty-four ten-chain lots which he granted 
to the settlers in free soccage : " Each lot has a front of 
ten chains, or 220 yards, a little more or less, along the 
said main line, except Lot 'No. 12 which has only five 
chains. The division lines between the lots are at right 
angles to the main line, and are marked off towards the 
river by lines of stakes. Each lot is to extend to the dis- 
tance of 90 chains or 1,980 yards back from the river, so 
as to contain 90 English statute acres, besides which each 
lot is to have a separate piece of wood-land, containing 10 
statute acres, to be laid off on the east side of the river, at 
any place which the Earl of Selkirk or his agent shall con- 
sider as most suitable for the purpose.'' ^^ 

V. The Plague of Grasshoppers 

During the next few years succeeding Lord Selkirk's 
departure, the Settlement was plagued with grasshoppers. 
Alexander Macdonell, in a letter to Lord Selkirk, stated 
that millions of these pests had appeared on August 2, 
1818, and that in places they were two or three inches 
deep.^^ Eoss thus vividly describes the destruction 
wrought by these insects. ^' Every step was now a pro- 
gressive one: agricultural labor advanced, the crop looked 
healthy and vigorous, and promised a rich harvest. In 
short, hope once more revived, and everything began to 

22 A. Eoss, The Red River Settlement, London, 1856, p. 43. 

2s Governor Alexander Macdonell to Lord Selkirk, Selkirk Papers. 



EARLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING H 

put on a thriving and prosperous appearance : wlien lo ! in 
the midst of all these pleasing anticipations, jnst as the 
com was in the ear, and the harley almost ripe, a cloud of 
grasshoppers ^^ from the west darkened the air, and fell 
like a heavy shower of snow upon the devoted colony. 
This stern visitation happened in the last week of July, 
and late one afternoon. JS'ext morning when the people 
arose it was not to gladness but to sorrow ; all their hopes 
were in a moment blighted! Crops, gardens, and every 
green herb in the settlement had perished, with the excep- 
tion of a few ears of barley, half ripe, gleaned in the 
women's aprons. This sudden and unexpected disaster 
was more than they could bear. The unfortunate emi- 
grants, looking up towards heaven, wept." ^^ Once more 
the settlers found it necessary to leave their homes and go 
to Pembina where starvation might be staved off with 
buffalo meat. 

Early in the spring of 1819, the Scotch settlers returned 
from Pembina to Kildonan and sowed the grain of such 

24 The insect which was responsible for the plague of 1818, and for 
subsequent plagues in 1864, 1857, etc., was known to the Red River 
settlers as a grasshopper; but, as I am informed by my colleague 
Dr. Charles H. O'Donoghue of the Department of Zoology, it would 
be more correctly designated a locust. A certain amount of con- 
fusion exists as to the correct application of the terms grass- 
hopper and locust. It is preferable to apply the term locust to 
those forms which migrate in long-distance flights and which usually 
are of large size. On the other hand, the Field Crrasshoppers, so 
common on our sidewalks, are usually smaller animals and progress 
only by characteristic, short flights. It is obvious, therefore, that 
the insect seen by the settlers, although of medium size, was a 
migratory locust. The species is known scientifically, according to 
information sent me by Dr. Gordon Hewitt, the Dominion Entomolog- 
ist, as the Rocky Mountain Locust, Melanoplus spretus. During 
recent decades, this pest has not again appeared. Dr. Hewitt thinks 
that this may be due to the northward extension of agriculture and 
the possible decrease in the insect's breeding places. 

25 A. Ross, loG. cit., p. 48, 



12 ESSAYS OX WHEAT 

cereals as had been rescued from the grasshoppers the 
previous year. But the attempt to raise wheat and barley 
was again defeated '^ not by a new flight of the pestilence 
of last year, but, still worse, by the countless swarms pro- 
duced in the ground itself where their larvae had been 
deposited. As early as the latter end of June, the fields 
were overrun by this sickening and destructive plague; 
nay, they were produced in masses, two, three, and in some 
places, near water, four inches deep. The water was poi- 
soned with them. Along the river they were to be found 
in heaps, like seaweed, and might be shoveled with a spade. 
It is impossible to describe, adequately, the desolation thus 
caused. Every vegetable substance was either eaten up 
or stripped to the bare stalk ; the leaves of the bushes, and 
the bark of the trees, shared the same fate ; and the grain 
vanished as fast as it appeared above ground, leaving no 
hope either of ^ seed to the sower or bread to the eater.^ 
Even fires, if kindled out of doors, were immediately ex- 
tinguished by them, and the decomposition of their bodies 
when dead, was still more offensive than their presence 
when alive." ^® 

Thus it came to pass that by the year 1820 there was no 
more seed-wheat left in the colony. The history of the 
first variety or varieties of wheat grown in western Can- 
ada, which, as we have seen, were of British origin, thus 
came to an untimely close. 

VI. New Seed-Wheat from the United States 

In order to secure a supply of seed-wheat to sow the 
land in the spring of 1820, the Selkirk settlers found it 
necessary to dispatch a party of men to Prairie du Chien, 
a town on the banks of the Mississippi in the State of 

26 A. Ross, loc. cit., pp. 49, 50. 



EAELY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 13 

Wisconsin. After journeying for several hundreds of 
miles on snow-shoes, the men arrived at their destination 
at the end of three months, and purchased 250 bushels at 
10s. per bushel. The grain was stowed in flat-bottomed 
boats which were laboriously propelled up the Mississippi 
Eiver, up its tributary the Minnesota River, through 
Big Stone Lake, and then down the Red River. ^"^ The Set- 
tlement was reached in June. The seed was immediately 
sown and the wheat-plants made a vigorous growth; but 
the grasshoppers again appeared, and it was feared that 
the crop would be destroyed for the third time. However, 
for some unexplained reason, the whole swarm suddenly 
disappeared early in the season, and did not return. 
Owing to the late sowing, the harvest did not ripen well, 
l^evertheless, it came to sufficient perfection for seed.^^ 
After this the Red River never lacked seed-wheat again 
until the year 1868 when, for the second time, a mighty 
swarm of grasshoppers completely destroyed all the crops. 
The cost of the expedition to Prairie du Chien was 
tremendous, for it amounted to no less than £1,040.^^ 
However, it was not allowed to weigh on the settlers for it 
was charged to the estate of Lord Selkirk and paid by his 
executors.^'^ Whether or not the new wheat brought from 
a distant part of the United States with so much toil and 
at so great an expense was 'a named variety or was simply 
called wheats unfortunately, does not now appear to be 
known. ^^ 

27 G. Bryce, loc. cit., pp. 157-158. 

28 A. Ross, loc. cit., p. 51. 

29 lUd. 

30 C. Martin, loc. cit., p. 173. 

31 Dr. C. N. Bell has informed me that when he came to Winnipeg 
nearly fifty years ago, there was a tradition in the colony that a 
number of new weeds were introduced into the colony with the seed- 
wheat from Prairie du Chien. Among these weeds the French-weed 
or Stink-weed {Thlaspi arvense) was especially mentioned. 



14 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

The crop of 1821 was not a large one and, after a .por- 
tion of it had been stored as seed for the next spring, the 
remainder was found to be insufficient to supply the food 
requirements of the colony for the winter. The shortage 
was rendered all the more acute by the arrival of a band 
of emigrants from the Cantons of Switzerland. It was 
therefore found necessary to send some of the settlers to 
the haunts of the buifalo at Pembina. In the spring of 
1822, these settlers returned and, during seed-time, the 
whole colony suffered all but absolute starvation. To 
such an extremity were some of the Swiss reduced that 
one of them gave a silver watch valued at five guineas for 
eight gallons of wheat, not to sow but to eat, another gave 
five shillings for six small fishes known as gold-eyes, and 
it is further reported that " one poor man, having nothing 
else, gave the very snuff out of his box for the head of a 
cat-fish." Thus ten years after the establishment of the 
Eed Eiver Settlement the colonists were still bearing great 
hardships. The first five years had been embittered by 
the enmity of the ^orth-West Company, and the succeed- 
ing ^Ye years by unfavorable crop conditions.^ ^ 

VII. The Hour-Glass 

During the early years of struggle against adversity, the 
colonists were prevented from suffering the direst want 
and actual starvation by the care of Lord Selkirk and his 
agents, who sent out to the Eed Eiver not only a supply of 
general goods, clothing, implements of husbandry, arms, 
and ammunition, but also a supply of oatmeal to fall back 
upon in the last extremity. These articles were kept in 
the colony store and supplied to the settlers by the Governor 
of the Colony. The store was grossly mismanaged, and 

32 A. Ross, loc cit., pp. 55-60. 



EARLY HISTORY OF ?^HEAT-GROWING 15 

one of the Governors, Alexander McDonell, was nieknamed 
the " grasshopper governor," as he proved as great a de- 
stroyer within doors as the grasshoppers had done in the 
fields outside. The Governor affected the style of an In- 
dian viceroy but, when the puncheons of rum arrived from 
England in the fall, did not hesitate to carouse with his 
secretaries, assistant-secretaries, accountants, orderlies, 
grooms, cooks, and butlers. The liquor account was kept 
in a distinctly novel manner, grains of wheat being used 
for the purpose. The heel of a bottle was filled with wheat 
and set on a cask, the contrivance being called the hour- 
glass. For every flagon drawn off, a grain of wheat was 
taken out of the hour-glass and put aside until the carousal 
was over. The grains were then counted, and the amount 
of expenditure ascertained. " From time to time," says 
Eoss, " the great man at the head of the table would dis- 
play his moderation by calling out to the butler, ' Bob, how 
stands the hour-glass ? ' ^ High, your honor ! high ! ' was 
the general reply; as much as to say they had drunk but 
little yet. Like the Chinese at Lamtschu, or a party of 
Indian chiefs smoking the pipe of peace, the challenges to 
empty glasses went round and round so long as a man could 
keep his seat; and of ten the revel ended in a general melee 
which led to the suspension of half-a-dozen officials and the 
postponement of business, till another bouse had made 
them all friends again. Unhappily, sober or drunk, the 
business was as fraudulent as it was complicated." On 
the arrival from England of Mr. Halkett, one of Lord Sel- 
kirk's executors and a staunch friend of the colony, Gover- 
nor McDonell's stewardship was brought to a close and the 
celebrated hour-glass was used no more.^^ 

33 A. Eoss, loG. cit.y pp. 63-68. 



16 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

VIII. The Census of 1822 

A census ^* of the Red River Settlement taken in the 
spring of 1822 throws an interesting light upon the state 
of the colony ten years after its foundation. The human 
population consisted of 681 persons, of which 234 were 
men, 161 women, and 286 children, hoys and girls being 
exactly equal in number. There were 126 houses and 160 
gardens. The livestock consisted of: 3 bulls, 45 cows, 39 
calves and 6 oxen; 10 sheep and 1 ram; 12 pigs; and 78 
horses. The seed sovtu in the spring of 1822, reckoned in 
bushels, was as follows: wheat, 235 ^%6; barley, 142^^2; 
Indian corn, 12^%2 ; potatoes, 5Y0 ; and peas, 17%. The 
books numbered 81. The total value of the Settlement 
was estimated at £4,620. Os. 6d.^ surely from our present 
point of view a very modest computation. 

IX. Milling Operations 

In 1824, after a protracted struggle of twelve years, the 
Scotch settlers reaped their first truly satisfactory crop of 
grain. By this time the plow was being tried with consid- 
erable success and greatly lightened the work of preparing 
the seed-bed. The yields obtained were high, the returns 
for wheat being forty-four from the plow and sixty-eight 
after the hoe.^^ At harvest time, the wheat was gathered 
with a sickle. It was then threshed with a flail and 
ground into flour with a handstone known as a quer/i. 
Several of these querns are still in existence, one being in 
the possession of the Ogilvie Milling Company of Winni- 
peg. Two others are at Lockport, one belonging to Mr. 
John MacDougal and the other to Mrs. J. E. McAlister. 
About 1823, the two-horse treadmill was introduced ; and 

34 An unsigned abstract in the Selkirk Papers, spring, 1822. 
'35 A. Ross, loc. cit., p. 78. 



EAKLY HISTOEY OF WHEAT-GROWING 17 

this was followed later by a Hudson's Bay wind-mill at 
Fort Douglas. The first millwright in the colony was 
Samuel Lamont, who arrived in 1813. Lord Selkirk, who 
sent him out, described him as one who ^' understands his 




Fig. 2. Hebrides women grinding with the quern or hand-mill. 
From E. B. Tylor's Anthropology. Courtesy of Macmillan & Co. 

business although he certainly looks like a dull fellow." ^^ 
It was Lord Selkirk's desire from the first that the Ked 
Kiver Settlement should produce enough flour not only. 
to supply its own needs but also those of the Hudson's Bay 
posts.^^ In 1814, he therefore instructed the Governor 
to pay the farmers at least two shillings a bushel for what 
they could spare and sent him a description of the most 
suitable method for grinding the wheat into flour. ^^ At 

36 Lord Selkirk in a letter to Miles JVIacdonell, April 12, 1814, 
Selkirk Papers. 

37 lUd. 

38 Ihid. 



18 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the same time, in connection with the raising of barley, 
Lord Selkirk referred to the possibility of erecting a dis- 
tillery.^^ In 1814 John Barleycorn was a king who little 
knew the contraction that was to take place in his domin- 
ions a century later. 

X. The Mice 

One of the most curious biological phenomena connected 
with the ^N'orth-West is the periodic rise and decline in the 
number of rabbits and mice, with which is associated a 
corresponding rise and decline in the numbers of the fur- 
bearing animals, such as the mink, the lynx, the fox, and 
the wolf, which feed upon them. The mice in 1825 evi- 
dently attained a maximum in numbers, for Ross tells us 
that, in the autumn of that year, the fields, the woods, and 
the plains seemed literally alive with them. They at- 
tacked the grain after it had been stacked and almost 
totally destroyed it. The straw and even the very stubble 
itself was cut to pieces by them, and, for a time, it was 
feared that the new plague would be as calamitous as the 
grasshoppers.^^ However, the next year the swarm of 
mice was found to have disappeared, and the fruits of the 
earth were no more threatened by them. 

XI. The Great Flood 

In the fall of 1825, a large party of half-breeds went 
south to pass the winter on the plains. About the twen- 
tieth of December there was an unusually heavy snowstorm 
which lasted for several days, in consequence of which the 
buffalo passed beyond the hunter's reach. Most of the 
horses died, and, before assistance could arrive, famine set 

3» Ibid. 

40 A. Ross, loc. cit., p. 97. 



EARLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 



19 



in. Thirty-three lives were lost, and only with infinite 
difficulty were the survivors conveyed to the settlement. 

The winter of 1825-26 followed a rainy season and was 
exceptionally severe. It began earlier and ended later than 
usual. The snows averaged three feet deep on the prairie 
and in the woods from three to four feet deep. The cold 
was intense, the temperature descending to 45 degrees 
below zero. The ice in the Red Eiver became five feet 
seven inches in thickness. The spring of 1826 was late 
in coming. The wind blew from the south for several 
days together, and the sudden burst of warm weather which 
ensued rapidly melted the accumulated snows. Eed Lake, 
Otter-tail Lake, and Lake Travers overflowed their banks. 
On the 2nd of May, the day before the ice started to move 
in the Red River, the water rose nine feet in twenty-four 
hours. On May 4, the water overflowed its banks and 
spread so fast that, before the settlers could fully realize 
what was happening, it had reached their dwellings. On 
May 5, the settlers abandoned their houses and sought 
refuge with their horses and cattle upon higher ground. 
A mighty lake was formed in which houses, barns, furni- 
ture, and moving blocks of ice were carried along to Lake 
Winnipeg. The height to which the water rose above the 
level of previous years was fifteen feet, and the water con- 
tinued rising until May 21. Wheat which at the com- 
mencement of the flood had fallen to 2s. per bushel soon 
rose to 16s. ^ or nearly double its normal price, and beef 
rose from %6Z. per pound to Sd. On May 22, the waters 
came to a stand and after a day or two began to fall. On 
the 15th of June, the settlers again drew near to their 
former habitations. They then broke up into two parties. 
One of them, comprising the Swiss emigrants, the de Meu- 
ron soldiers, and other reckless spirits, determined to try 
their fortunes elsewhere, and on June 24 took their de- 



20 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

parture for the United States. The other party, consist- 
ing of Scotch settlers, were not so easily chilled by disap- 
pointments and, without any hesitation, resumed work on 
their cheerless farms. The seeding season was already 
very advanced, yet barley, potatoes, and even a little wheat 
sowed as late as June 22 came to maturity. ^^ 

XII. Prosperity in 1829 

After the disastrous year 1826 which, however, served 
to purge the settlement of its human dross, conditions 
greatly improved, and by 1830 the colony was thriving as 
it had never done before. The saturation of the soil with 
the flood water was favorable to succeeding harvests, and 
several good crops were now reaped. Ross states that 
from a field sowed with 10 bushels he obtained 255 bushels ; 
and that from another field, sowing 8 bushels, which had 
been left fallow for two years running, during which it 
had been plowed three different times and then sown in 
drills, he obtained for a first crop 280 bushels.'*^ 

The population now became increased by the arrival of 
a number of settlers who were of a much more desirable 
type than those who had left after the flood ; and many new 
houses were erected to accommodate them. This rapid 
progress and the excellent crops soon fully restored confi- 
dence in the future of the colony. Governor Donald 
Mackensie, writing to Colvile in August, 1829, grew en- 
thusiastic concerning the improvement which had taken 
place and in colorful language referred to : the corn " rich 
and flourishing," '^ the boundless prairie " with cattle like 
" herds of buffalo brousing," the groups of haymakers 

41 A. Ross, loc. cit., pp. 98-107. Of the disastrous events in the 
year 1826, Ross, who was an eyewitness, gives a very vivid de- 
scription. 

^^lUd., p. 112. 



EARLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 21 

" healthj and blooming," the " community of sentiments," 
the ^^ stacks and laden carts straining the eye in countless 
succession," and to the " ensemble of landscape perhaps 
nowhere to be equaled." "' I beg to congratulate you and 
all my employers," he ended, ^^ on the prosperous state of 
the Colony." ^s 

XIII. The Bed Biver Flour 

Up to about the year 1831, the Hudson's Bay Company 
could never rely upon the settlers for a sufficient supply 
of flour for the needs of its servants scattered through 
the West, and actually y^as obliged to import annually 
from England, via the Hudson Bay, such articles of con- 
sumption as it needed. To encourage agriculture, Gov- 
ernor Simpson, the chief manager of the Company's affairs 
throughout Eupert's Land, promised to take all the Com- 
pany's supplies from the colony. This roused the settlers 
to fresh activity and, for a time, all the wants of the 
Company were adequately met. ]^o sooner was this done, 
however, than prices fell, flour coming down from IQs. to 
lis. 6cZ. per hundred weight, butter from Is. to ^d. per 
pound, and cheese from (Sd. to 4«i. per pound. The market 
was becoming overstocked, and the settlers found that the 
extension of their farming operations had made them but 
little better off. Just at this time, a great outcry was 
raised throughout the country against the quality of the 
produce : the flour was said to be " heated, sour, and alto- 
gether of so very bad quality as to be only fit to poison 
pigs," and the refinements of the English language were 
inadequate to condemn sufficiently the butter and the 
cheese.** 

43 Chester Martin, loo. cit., p. 175. 

44 A. Ross, loc. cit., p. 116. 



22 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

That the flour was not good, there can be no doubt. 
Its evil quality was largely due to the lack of the neces- 
sary conveniences for pursuing agricultural operations. 
" In the whole colony/' says Ross, " there was not to be 
found either a smut-mill or fanning machine to clean 
the grain, and but few bams to thresh it in, and still 
fewer to dry it; much, therefore, of the grain had, of 
necessity, to be threshed on an ice-floor, in the open air, 
during all weathers, and then ground in a frozen state, 
and immediately packed in casks made of green wood, 
furnished by the Company itself." With such a mode 
of preparation, it was little wonder that the flour became 
heated and sour, and made unpalatable bread. 

To improve the quality of the flour produced in the 
colony. Governor Simpson resolved to discontinue buying 
flour from the settlers and to buy wheat instead. The 
wheat was then to be dried and milled under the direction 
of the Hudson's Bay Company. The price of the grain 
was fixed at 3s. 6d. per bushel, equivalent to lis. Qd. per 
hundred weight, which had been considered by both par- 
ties a fair price for the flour. At the next harvest, which 
was below the average, the Company bought in from 8,000 
to 10,000 bushels of wheat and kept it in their granaries 
for the winter. Unfortunately these buildings were too 
small, there was no space in which to shift the grain from 
place to place, and it had to be heaped up often four 
or five feet deep. The wheat had been bought by the 
measured bushel, and all that had been offered, good, bad, 
and indifferent, had been taken. Some of it had been 
threshed in barns and some of it on ice-floors in the open ; 
and it was by no means free either from moisture or smut. 
On being left piled up in the granaries, the wheat naturally 
heated and became almost baked together. The rest of 
the story is best told in Ross's own words : " Large quan- 



EAKLY HISTOKY OF WHEAT-GROWING 23 

titles of dried buffalo meat had been stored up in the same 
buildings, the daintiest fragments of which were carried off 
bj the mice and mixed up with the wheat, making a 
compound of wheat, smut, icicles, dried meat, mice, and 
mice nests, all more or less heated together; the smell of 
which, without the hazardous experiment of tasting, was 
absolutely disgusting. In this state, despite all advice 
to the contrary, and the certainty of bringing disgrace 
upon the colony, the wheat was ground and the flour 
shipped off to the different trading posts. The writer, 
having a mill, was among those patronized on this occasion 
and can bear witness that the smell was intolerable. 
When the complaints of the victimized consumers had 
to be answered, the whole blame was laid upon the 
millers." ^^ 

To grind its wheat into flour, the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany had employed twelve mills belonging to the colonists. 
The flour thus produced contained a large amount of 
bran, as is proved by the following analyses*^ made by 
Governor Einlayson: 

Pounds Pounds 

of of 

Flour. Bran. 

No. 1. In 112 from John Vincent's mill was found 12 

No. 2. In 112 from William Bird's mill was found 12 

No. 3. In 112 from George Flitt's mill was found 12, 

No. 4. In 112 from Narcisse Marion's mill was found 14 

No. 6. In 112 from Michel Klyne's mill was found 14 

No. 6. In 112 from James Inkster's mill was found 14 

45 A. Ross, loc. cit., p. 120. 

^^lUd., p. 121. Ross adds: No. 1 and 2. Half-breeds of English 
extraction. 3. An Orkney man. 4. A Canadian. 5. A German. 
6. An Orkney-man. 7. A half-breed of Scotch extraction. 8. An 
Irishman. 9. A half-breed of English extraction. 10. A Scotchman. 
11. A half-breed of Orkney extraction. 12. A half-breed of Canadian 
extraction. 



24 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Pounds Pounds 

of of 

Flour. Bran. 

No. 7. In 112 from Thomas Logan's mill was found 14 

No. 8. In 112 from Andrew McDermot's mill was found... 18 

No. 9. In 112 from Thomas Bird's mill v/as found 20 

No. 10. In 112 from Hugh Poison's mill was found 20 

No. 11. In 112 from Robert Sandeson's mill was found 26 

No. 12. In 112 from Cuthbert Grant's mill was found 28 



XIV. Windmills 

In the earl J years of the Settlement^ Lord Selkirk sent 
out a windmill to replace the querns. This had cast rollers 
and machinery capable of working two pairs of stones; 
but, when it arrived, no one was able to set it in opera- 
tion. It was therefore sent back to England and re- 
shipped. At length, ten years after its first arrival in 
the Colony, Lord Selkirk's executors sent out a Scotch 
mill-wright named Mitchell to put it in order. His ef- 
forts having been successful, the windmill began to work 
in 1825. It had cost no less than £1,500. It was then 
sold to Mr. Logan for a fifth part of this sum, and he, 
having some knov/ledge of machinery, turned the mill to 
good account for many years. In the spring flood of 
1852, its strong and lofty pillar resisted the high water 
and afforded protection to many of the settlers who 
sought refuge within its walls. ^^ After Logan's mill had 
proved a success, similar ones were erected ; and windmills 
dotted here and there came to form an interesting feature 
of the landscape. 

XY. The Experimental Farms 

On three occasions before 1850, an attempt was made to 
help the settlers by the institution of experimental farms ; 
^^Ibid., pp. 144-145. 



EAKLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 25 

but all these farms failed, and they became known in the 
colony as the '^ three "unfortunate sisters." *^ 

The first experimental farm was planned by Lord Sel- 
kirk and was called the '' Hay Pield Farm.'' A Scotch 
farmer named Laidlaw was sent out to take charge, but 
mismanagement ruined everything. " Barns, yards, 
parks, and houses of every description," says Eoss, " were 
provided; and yet all the time there was not an ox to 
plow, nor a cow to milk in the settlement. To crown 
the folly and extravagance of the undertaking, a mansion 
befitting a peer was built at an expense of £600, which 
at the moment of completion was accidentally burnt to 
ashes in a drunken frolic. After several years' labor, 
waste, and extravagance, every vestige of property on the 
farm had disappeared, the experiment having cost Lord 
Selkirk £2,000." ^^ The project was abandoned in 1822. 

The second experimental farm was a favorite scheme 
of Governor Simpson, and greatly was he dejected by its 
failure. Its one contribution to the welfare of the settlers 
appears to have been the introduction of a fine stallion 
from England at a cost of £300, with a consequent improve- 
ment in the breed of horses. The management of the 
farm unfortunately was put into the hands of a fur 
trader who tried various experiments without success. 
Finally, after six years' trial, the farm was sold with 
a dead loss to the Company of £3,500." ^^ 

The third experimental farm was organized by a com- 
mittee in London, and Captain Cary, a half-pay officer, 
whose agricultural knowledge appears to have been more 
theoretical than practical, was sent out to take charge. 
Everything that money could procure was provided, but 

48 /Md.,, p. 212. 
^9lhid., pp. 77-78. 
50 Hid., pp. 133-135. 



26 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the settlers always had the better crops both in quantity and 
quality. The model farmers mowed down their fields of 
grain with the scythe in place of cutting it with a sickle, 
■and gathered it with rakes instead of tying it into sheaves. 
This practice, however, the settlers refused to follow. The 
dairy served to keep the Governor's tea-table in milk ; but 
his butter and cheese were furnished by the settlers. 
After dragging out its existence for about ten years, the 
farm ceased to operate, and, when its stock and implements 
had been sold, the experimenters were losers by £5,500.^^ 
The Dominion Experimental Farms system was founded 
in 1888, and among the first branch farnis to be established 
was one at Brandon in Manitoba. This experimental 
farm has been the scene of the carrying out of many im- 
portant investigations both in respect to field crops and 
live-stock, and has contributed in no small degree to the 
progress of agriculture in the West. Lord Selkirk's be- 
lief in the value of an experimental farm has therefore been 
justified. 

XVI. The Bloody Flux 

In 1846, the Eed River Settlement was terribly afflicted 
by a disease known to the settlers as the bloody flux. 
In January of that year the influenza raged, and in May 
measles broke out; but neither of these maladies proved 
very fatal. In June, however, the bloody flux began its 
ravages among the Indians of the White Horse Plains 
and soon spread with alarming rapidity and awful con- 
sequences to the whites. At the Settlement '' there was 
not a smiling face in a summer's day," " hardly anything 
to be seen but the dead on their way to their last home, 
nothing to be heard but the tolling of bells, and nothing 

Bi A. Ross, loc. cit., pp. 211-219. 



EARLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 27 

talked of but the sick, the dying, and the dead.'' On 
one occasion thirteen burials were proceeding at the same 
time. Erom June 18 to August 2, the deaths averaged 
seven a day, or 321 in all, so that the population was 
reduced by one person out of every sixteen. ^^ The Span- 
ish influenza which became epidemic in the city of Winni- 
peg in the present year, 1918, serious though its effects 
have been, has not exhibited one-tenth the virulence of 
the bloody flux of 1846, for out of a population of some 
200,000 there have been fewer than 1,000 deaths, or 
about one death for every two hundred persons. There 
is every reason to believe that the bloody flux was due to 
insanitary living conditions. The disease itself, which is 
now sometimes called bleeding diarrhea a, was doubtless a 
form of dysentery and may have been caused by the water- 
inhabiting parasite Amceba histolytica, which was respon- 
sible for so many deaths to the soldiers of the British Em- 
pire during their gallant attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula. 

XVII. The Census of 18Jf9 

A census taken in 1849 shows that by this time great 
progress had been made in the development of the colony. 
The population had grown to 5,391 persons. There were 
745 houses, 12 schools, 7 churches, 2 water-mills and 18 
windmills. The plows numbered 492, the harrows 576, 
the carts 1,918, the boats 40, and the canoes 428. The 
land under cultivation was upwards of 6,000 acres. The 
live-stock consisted of 1,095 horses, 990 mares, 2,097 oxen, 
155 bulls, 2,147 cows, 1,615 calves, 1,565 pigs, and 3,096 
sheep. ^^ 

52 A. Ross, loc. cit.y pp. 362-363. 

53 ihid., loc. cit., p. 409. 



28 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

XVIII. Another Plague of Grasshoppers 

In the spring of 1852 and 1861, the colony was again 
flooded by an overflow from the Red River, and scenes were 
witnessed recalling those of 1826. Grasshoppers laid 
waste the crops in 1857, 1858, 1864, 1867, and 1868.^* 

The devastation caused by the grasshoppers in 1868 
was as complete as in 1819. The insects arrived in 1867 
at the beginning of the harvest and, after greatly injuring 
the wheat and entirely destroying the oats and barley, de- 
posited their eggs just as they had done in 1818.^^ In 
1868 the eggs hatched and the larvae which emerged cleared 
the fields of every vestige of vegetation. " The multitude 
of insects," says Hargrave, " was so great as to render 
it difficult to convey an appreciable idea of their numbers 
to the minds of those absent from the scenes of their devas- 
tations. Piled in heaps about the walls of Fort Garry, 
they were carted away and burned up to prevent the 
efiluvia from their decaying bodies contaminating the at- 
mosphere during the stifling heats of an unusually warm 
summer." Threatened with absolute starvation, the colo- 
nists were obliged to appeal for help ; and the appeal was 
not in vain. Letters were written to the Times with the 
result that the British public sent to the succor of the 
colony the sum of £3,000. In addition, $12,000 were col- 
lected in Canada and £900 in the United States of Amer- 
ica. In the meanwhile^ the Council of Assiniboia voted a 
sum of £1,600 for immediate expenditure as follows: 
£600 to purchase seed wheat, £500 to procure flour from 
the United States, and £500 for fishing tackle and ammu- 
nition. The flour to be conveyed to the colony was re- 
ceived by an agent at St. Paul and then transported over 

54 J. J. Hargrave, Red Eiver, Montreal, 1871, pp. 175-176, 446. 

55 lUd., p. 419. 



EAKLY HISTOEY OF WHEAT-GKOWING 29 

the plains during the winter by the laborious and expensive 
means of horse and ox sledges. There were 260 miles of 
journeying from St. Paul to Fort Abercrombie, and then 
another 250 miles from Fort Abercrombie to the head- 
quarters of the Settlement on the Red River. The trans- 
portation of the flour, however, was successfully accom- 
plished, and the settlers, as they ate their bread in the 
winter of 1868-69, were cheered with the thought of the 
warm sympathy which their needs had awakened in the 
great world without. ^^ 

XIX. State of the Settlement in 1870 

After the Hudson's Bay Company altered its route for 
the importation of the goods intended for its trade from 
the old one of the Hudson Bay to that of St. Paul, a very 
considerable trafiic by means of Red River carts grew up 
between St. Paul and the Red River Settlement. Accord- 
ing to Hargrave, who wrote in 1871, some 1,500 carts made 
the journey yearly and 500 carts twice a year. They 
carried furs to the south and brought back manufactured 
articles on the return journey. Three hundred carts also 
plied between the Settlement and the district of Saskatche- 
wan.^''' This contact with other civilized communities 
gradually became more intimate and the Settlement corre- 
spondingly less isolated. 

In 1870 the total population, including white settlers, 

56 Ihid., pp. 446-449, In one item Hargrave is in error, for lie 
states that the Canadian contribution to the relief of the Settlement 
was $3,600. This figure is too small. Chester Martin, who has had 
access to the accounts, says that " Canadian cities and private indi- 
viduals contributed more than $12,000." Vide C. Martin, The Eed 
River Settlement, in Canada and Its Provinces, Toronto, 1914, Vol. 
XIX, p. 68. Minnesota's contribution, according to Martin, was 
$5,000. 

57 Hid., pp. 167-168. 



30 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Indians, and half-breeds, was 12,800,^^ but the amount 
of land under cultivation was still very small. There was 
no market to supply except that at home and that provided 
by the requirements of the Hudson's Bay Company, so 
that there was no inducement to the settlers to extend their 
farming operations. The farms were all situated on the 
Red River between Upper Fort Garry and Lower Fort 
Garry, and along the northern bank of the Assiniboine 
River. Even as late as 1870, the possibility of growing 
cereals on the prairie more than two miles back from the 
rivers had not been tested. ^^ The first settlers on the open 
prairie appear to have been the Mennonites, who came to 
the southern part of the province of Manitoba from Russia 
in 1875. Among other things which the Mennonites 
brought with them was a variety of wheat known as White 
Russian, which was ultimately supplanted by Red Fife. 

The first exportation of wheat to the East took place in 
1876 and consisted of 857 bushels of Red Fife — all that 
could be obtained — which was required in Ontario for 
seeding purposes. The consignment left Winnipeg by 
steamer and was conveyed up the Red River to Fisher's 
Landing where it was transferred to a railway truck for 
carriage to Duluth.^^ 

XX. Effect of the Revolution in the Milling Industry 

The extension of the cultivation of Red Fife and other 
hard red spring wheats in western Canada and the Great 
Plains region of the United States was profoundly influ- 
enced by the revolution which took place in the milling 

58 ihid., p. 174. 
59lhid., pp. 176-177. 

60 For a more extended account of this incident, vide Chapter III, 
Section XXIII. 



EARLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 31 

industry between the years 1870 and 1880. In 1870 
there was introduced into Minnesota the first purifier, a 
device for separating branny particles from midlings and 
flour, which had been invented in France by Perrigault. 
Before the advent of the purifier, the method of milling 
was such that the intrinsic value of the flour of hard spring 
wheat was unknown and unsuspected: spring-wheat flour 
was regarded as far inferior to flour from winter-wheat 
on account of the fact that although it was strong and pro- 
duced well-risen loaves, it was of poor color. With the 
coming of the purifier which was first used in connection 
with mill-stones and afterwards with chilled-iron rollers, 
all this was changed, for the new machine enabled the 
miller to grind from the hitherto despised hard spring 
wheat a product with the desired whiteness, which, on ac- 
count of its strength, immediately commanded a price 
equal to the best flour from winter wheat. ^^ " This," says 
Edgar, " gave a great impetus to milling in the North- 
West, increased the demand for spring wheat, rendered 
valuable the crops of Minnesota, the Dakotas, and western 
Canada, and led to the agricultural development of that 
section of the western continent. Spring-wheat flour 
sprang into favor in America, and when introduced abroad, 
especially in the United Kingdom, won its way against all 
competition. In the end, the demand for it caused British 
millers to remodel their mills and grind a mixture of 
home-grown and American wheats." ®^ Had it not been 
for the invention of the purifier, it is certain that the grow- 
ing of spring wheat in the West would have been greatly 
retarded, cereal breeding at Ottawa might not have been 
begun so early as it was, and Marquis wheat, to which the 

61 William Edgar, The Story of a Grain of Wheat, Loudon, pp. 
155-156. 

62 Ihid. 



32 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

third Chapter is devoted^ might never have come into 
existence. 

The Eiel insurrection which took place in 1869, was 
occasioned by want of tact on the part of the Government 
at Ottawa in its dealings with the Kcd Eiver settlers ; and. 
it was only brought to an end in 1870 by a military expe- 
dition sent out under the leadership of Col. Garnet 
Wolseley.^^ 

In 1870 the Province of Manitoba was formed and be- 
came the fifth of the sisterhood of the Provinces of the 
Dominion. In the same year a census was taken of the 
village of Winnipeg, with the result that 215 persons were 
found to be residing within its boundaries. 



XXI. The St. Paul Bailway 

Soon after Manitoba had been organized as a province, 
settlers began to pour into it from the south. Immigrants 
from Ontario and the Old Country were compelled to come 
through the United States to Chicago, then northwest to 
St. Paul, and then northwards across 450 miles of level 
prairie. Por eight years a stream of immigrants made the 
long journey into Manitoba by wagon, by stage, by coach, 
and by Eed Eiver steamer ; and great was the relief to the 
traffic when at last, in 1878, the first railway entered the 
province from the south. This new means of communica- 
tion gave a direct connection between St. Paul in Minne- 
sota and the little town of St. Boniface on the right bank 
of the Eed Eiver. On arriving at railhead, the settler, in 

63 Cf. George Bryce, Sketch, of the History of the City of Winni- 
peg and of the Four Provinces of V\^estern Canada, in A Handbook 
to Winnipeg and the Province of Manitoba, British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, Winnipeg Meeting, 1909, Winnipeg, pp. 
13-15. 



EARLY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 33 

order to get to Winnipeg, had merely to cross the river in a. 
ferry boat.^* 

XXII. The Canadian Pacific Railway 

The St. Paul Eailway was a great boon and formed a 
splendid link with the United States ; but something still 
was lacking. The rising spirit of Canada, supported by 
the voice of Manitoba, demanded that an all-Canadian rail- 
way should be built across the continent, so as to give the 
West a direct connection with the East. This great project 
was eventually brought to a successful conclusion, with the 
result that in 1886 there took place an event of outstand- 
ing significance for the subsequent development of wheat- 
growing in western Canada: there passed through Winni- 
peg on Dominion Day, July 1, the first through train from 
Montreal to Vancouver. Its engine, Canadian Pacific 
Railway No. Ij ran upon a line of steel destined to bear 
to the country's ports hundreds of millions of bushels of 
wheat required to satisfy the world's craving for bread. 

A grain of wheat is a very tiny thing in itself, but the 
prosperity of western Canada is bound up with its exist- 
ence ; and it is not too much to say that without the grain 
of wheat in its collective form, the great and thriving city 
of Winnipeg, with its population of 200,000 souls, its im- 
posing buildings, its fine streets, and its busy cosmopolitan 
life, would scarcely have advanced at the present time be- 
yond the status of a small trading station. The growth 
of Winnipeg from a village of 215 people in 1870 to its 
present proportions has been due in large measure to the 
construction of the Canadian Pacific Eailway, the connect- 
ing of the east and west parts of Canada by a band of steel. 
Through mile after weary mile for hundreds of miles was 

6* Cf. G. Bryce, loc. cit. 



34 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the track pushed from the east, past lake and swamp and 
stream, onwards amid the lonely forests of Pine and Pop- 
lar, of Spruce and Birch, on, on, through all that long 
stretch of rocky bowlder-strewn country north of the Great 
Lakes which was swept bare of soil in the dawn of human 
history, onwards and ever onwards, until at last it reached 
the West. All the vast difficulties in the path of the engi- 
neers were overcome because the men behind the C. P. R. 
were men of vision, men who could see in the mind's eye 
under the blue dome of heaven the golden grain which 
would come to clothe the fertile acres of the broad prairie- 
land. Surely the brightest dreams of the founders of the 
C. P. E. have been amply justified by events. 

The completion of the eastern half of the Canadian Pa- 
cific Railway immediately provided that direct connection 
with the Old Country market for which Manitoba had been 
longing; and soon the agricultural progress and prosperity 
of the West were assured. The tide of immigration grew 
ever stronger and Winnipeg became the great gateway to 
the new Land of Promise. The buffalo disappeared, the 
Indian gave place to the white man, and vast tracts of the 
virgin prairie were turned with the plow. The wheat of 
the prairie provinces, on account of its high quality, ac- 
quired universal fame, and Canada came to be called the 
Grranary of the British Empire. How well that Granary 
served the cause of the Allies in its time of trial needs 
no telling; for it is known to the whole world. 



CHAPTER II 
Wheat ijs^ Westeri^ Caistada 

I. 8ome Crop Statistics 

The rapid progress made bj western Canada in recent 
years is reflected by the crop returns. In 1904 the wheat 
crop in Manitoba and Saskatchewan was only 56,000,000 
bushels, and the raising of cereals in Alberta was then in 
its initial stages. In 1906, the wheat crop of Manitoba, 
Saskatchewan, and Alberta had risen to 102,000,000 
bushels. In 1913, this was about doubled and amounted 
to 209,000,000 bushels. In 1915 the wheat crop in the 
Prairie Provinces was produced under exceptionally fav- 
orable weather conditions and was a most extraordinary 
one. The Dominion Census Bureau estimated it to be 
360,000,000 bushels. When it is borne in mind that in 
1915 much less than one-half of the good wheat land of 
the West had as yet been broken by the plow, the optimism 
of western Canadians in the future of their half of the 
Dominion seems to be well justified. 

Owing to the development of the West, Canada has now 
attained a very important place among the commonwealth 
of nations as a grain-producing country. Eeferring to 
the great crop year of 1915, Mr. W. E. Milner, as retiring 
President of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, in September, 
1916, made the following remarks: ^^ This has been one 
of the most phenomenal years in the history of the grain 
business in the Dominion of Canada. Our farmers, hav- 

35 



36 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



ing been Messed by the hand of Providence, produced the 
largest crop ever grown in this country and, now that the 
final figures are available, we find that our wheat crop 
reached the enormous total of 376,448,400 bushels; our 
oat crop, 389,000,000 bushels; barley, 39,202,000 bushels; 
and our flax 6,000,000 bushels, making a grand total of 
810,650,400 bushels of grain." ^ 

The crops for 1916, 1917, and 1918 have not been nearly 
as good as those of the banner year 1915. ^Nevertheless, 
during this period, in the Prairie Provinces, the wheat 
crop on the average has been well in excess of 200,000,000 
bushels. 

The chief wheat-growing province is now Saskatchewan, 
after which comes Manitoba and then Alberta, as is shown 
by the following figures for spring wheat for the year 
1915:2 

Acreage and Yield of Wheat for 1915 





Acreage 


Bushels 


Yield 
per acre 


Saskatchewan .... 

Manitoba 

Alberta 


6,884,874 
3,664,281 
1,637,122 


173,723,775 
96,662,912 
58,830,704 


25.23 
26.40 
35.93 



The average annual yield of wheat in bushels per acre 
in the principal wheat-growing countries of the world, for 
the five consecutive years 1909-13, was as follows: ^ 

1 W. E. Milner, President's Address, Eighth Annual Report (new 
series) of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, Winnipeg, September, 1916, 
p. 24. 

2 Supplement to the Cereal Maps of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and 
Alberta, issued from the Natural Resources Intelligence Branch of 
the Department of the Interior, Ottawa, 1917, pp. 4, 6, 8. 

3 Ibid., p. 13. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 



37 




38 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Average Yield of Wheat in Bushels per Acre 

Yield Yield 

per acre per acre 

United Kingdom . . . 31.9 United States 14.6 

Germany 31.8 Australia 13.2 

Austria 20.2 British India 11.9 

Canada 20.0 Eussia 10.8 

France 19.1 Argentina 9.9 

Hungary 18.8 

from which it will be seen that the fertility of the soil in 
Canada has exceeded that of the United States by 5.4 
bushels per acre but has been considerably less than that 
of the United Kingdom and Germany. 

The average yield of spring wheat per acre for the 
Prairie Provinces for the ten-year period, 1908-lY inclu- 
sive, was as follows : ^ 

Average Yield of Spring Wheat in Bushels per Acre 

Manitoba 17.75 bushels 

Saskatchewan 18.50 bushels 

Alberta 22.50 bushels 

Upwards of nine-tenths of Canada's wheat is produced 
in the Prairie Provinces. These provinces, in the five 
years, 1913-17 inclusive, produced 1,283,000,000 bushels 
of wheat, whereas the rest of Canada in the same period 
produced only 118,000,000 bushels.^ 

In per capita production of wheat Canada leads all coun- 
tries. This is due to the smallness of her population rela- 
tively to the vastness of her acreage sown to wheat. The 

* Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Statistics, Ottawa, August, 
1918, pp. 222-223. 

5 The annual figures upon which this calculation is based are given 
in a foot-note in the last Section of Chapter III. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 39 

following have been tlie figures for the production of wheat 
for every man, woman and child in a few leading coun- 
tries: Canada 32 bushels, Argentina 25 bushels, Aus- 
tralia 17.5 bushels, Rumania 14.5 bushels, Bulgaria 12.5 
bushels, Erance 8 bushels, the United States 7.5 bushels, 
and the United Kingdom 1.5 bushels.^ 

Canada is a most extravagant user of wheat. For seed 
and other purposes she has used about 16.5 bushels per 
capita or about half what she has produced. The next 
countries making the freest use of wheat are : Argentina 
11 bushels per capita, France 9.5 bushels, Italy and Aus- 
tralia 7.5 bushels, and the United Kingdom 7 bushels/. 

Canada leads all other countries in the difference be- 
tween her per capita production and consumption of wheat, 
and this, combined with her vast wheat crops, puts her in 
a very favorable position as a wheat-exporting country. 
In 1913, the year before the war, when reliable statistics 
could still be obtained for all countries, the exports of 
wheat (including flour reduced to grain) from the twelve 
most important countries were as follows : ^ 

Exports of Wheat in Bushels, 1913 

Bushels Bushels 

United States . . . 154,760,000 Eoumania 54,203,000 

Canada 151,975,000 Australia 53,207,000 

Eussia 130,596,000 Germany 29,638,000 

Argentina 109,637,000 Belgium 15,898,000 

Netherlands 64,501,000 Bulgaria 11,456,000 

British India .... 54,711,000 Austria-Hungary 1,730,000 

from which it is obvious that Canada stood second in the 

6V. C. Finch and 0. E. Baker, Geography of the World's Agri- 
culture, Washington, 1917, figures read from the diagram in Fig. 
11, p. 14. 

7 lUd. 

8 Supplement to the Cereal Maps of Manitoba, etc., loc. cit., p. 14. 



40 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

list, exporting only slightly less wheat than the United 
States. 

In the year 1915-16, the world's exports of wheat were 
seriously disturbed by the war. In that year, Canada had 
an immense surplus of wheat and took the premier position 
as a wheat-exporting country, surpassing even the United 
States. The exports of the four leading nations for 
1915-16 were as follows: ^ 

Export of Wheat in Bushels, 1915-16 

Bushels Bushels 

Canada 267,766,000 Argentina 91,390,000 

United States . . . 239,526,000 Austraha and 

New Zealand . . 63,249,000 

So far as the total production of wheat is concerned, 
Canada is still far behind several other countries, notably 
the United States, the Eussian Empire, British India, and 
France, as will be seen from the following statistics of 
wheat production which are given as the average for the 
three-year period 1911-13 inclusive : ^^ 

Amount of Wheat Raised in Bushels 

Bushels Bushels 

Eussian Empire 727,133,300 Brought forward 2,601,951,600 

ITnited States.. 704,995,000 Italy 190,840,000 

British India... 369,612,300 German Empire 160,236,700 

France 324,136,700 Argentina 155,828,300 

Austria-Hungary 247,141,000 Australia 88,961,000 

Canada 228,933,300 United Kingdom 61,297,300 

Japan 26,305,300 

Carried forward 2,601,951,600 Other Countries 527,589,700 

Total 3,813,009,900 

From these figures one may draw the conclusion that, be- 

dlhid., p. 15. 

10 Geography of the World's Agriculture, loc. cit., p. 8. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 41 

fore the war, Canada's fraction of the total wheat produc- 
tion of the world was less than one-sixteenth of the whole. 
In the year 1918, the farmers of both Canada and the 
United States, with a view to winning the war, made a spe- 
cial effort to increase the wheat crop, with the result that 
the combined wheat harvest of the two countries amounted 
to more than 1,100,000,000 bushels. The following were 
the crops resulting from the " food offensive " as esti- 
mated in October : ^^ 

United States 918,920,000 bushels 

Canada 210,000,000 bushels 

In this competition to succor the Allies, Canada was un- 
fortunately handicapped by a prolonged drought, whereas 
in the United States the weather conditions were about 
normal. Thus it came to pass that in 1918 the United 
States produced upwards of four times as much wheat as 
Canada. However, there is still very much good wheat 
land in western Canada untouched by the plow, and some 
day Canada may produce more wheat than the United 
States. It is even possible that at no very distant date 
the United States may look to her northern neighbor for 
a large part of her daily bread. 



II. Wheat Growing 



12 



Winter wheat has a higher yield than spring wheat, 
wherever it can be successfully grown. However, on ac- 

11 The United States figures are taken from the Monthly Crop 
Report for October, 1918, issued at Washington, and giving indica- 
tions as for October 1; and the Canadian figures are taken from a 
press bulletin issued Oct. 31 by the Dominion Census Bureau. 

12 For valuable assistance in writing this Section, I am indebted 
to Professor John Bracken of the Field Husbandry Department of 
the University of Saskatchewan. 



42 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



count of climatic conditions, very little winter wheat is 
grown in western Canada. The following Table shows the 
acreage devoted to spring wheat and winter wheat respec- 
tively in the three Prairie Provinces in the year 1918: ^' 

Numher of Acres Devoted to Spring and Winter Wheat in 1918 





Spring 
Wheat 


Winter 
Wheat 


Alberta 

Saskatchewan 

Manitoba 


3,187,000 
9,101,000 
2,616,000 


58,000 
2,000 


Total 


14,904,000 


60,000 



From this Table it is clear that such winter wheat as is 
grown at all in the West is chiefly produced in Alberta, 
and that the acreage devoted to winter wheat in the three 
Prairie Provinces taken tos^ether amounted in 1918 to only 
two-fifths of 1 per cent, of the total wheat acreage. West- 
em Canada, therefore, as a whole, is a spring-wheat region. 
The climatic factors which tend to kill winter wheat are: 
(1) very low temperatures during the winter, (2) the rela- 
tive absence of snow locally, (3) alternate freezing and 
thawing in spring, and (4) drying winds in spring. 

The wheats sown in the spring are hard red varieties, the 
chief sorts being Marquis and Red Fife. The winter 
wheats, sown in the autumn, are chiefly Turhey Red and 
Kharkov. In dry parts of southern Alberta and southern 
Saskatchewan durum wheats are grown to a very small 
extent, but their culture may be considerably increased in 
the future. 

The virgin prairie is usually broken in the month of 
June. Its surface is then cultivated and left uncropped 

13 Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Statistics, Ottawa, August, 
1918, pp. 222-223. 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 43 

until the following spring. Thus the prairie grasses, etc., 
are prevented from growing and using up moisture, and 
the moisture is stored and conserved in the newly-broken 
land. 

After one or more crops have been taken from the land 
subsequently to new breaking or summ.er fallowing, the 
land is prepared for the next crop by fall or spring plow- 
ing, by disking, cultivating, or, in some cases, by seeding 
on the untilled fields without any previous cultivation. 
Fall plowing is the most common practice but, in the dryer 
areas, spring plowing is sometimes carried out instead. 
The disadvantage of spring plowing arises from the delay 
which is involved in putting in the seed: spring plowing 
necessitates late sowing, late sowing is followed by late 
ripening, and late ripening of the grain increases the dan- 
ger to which the crop is exposed from early fall frosts. In 
some areas where plowing is not considered necessary but 
where some form of surface tillage is deemed advisable, 
the stubble fields are disked or cultivated either in the fall 
or the spring. Sowing on untilled stubble fields, while 
not a general practice, is frequently carried out on land 
which is free from grass and weeds and the surface of 
which in the spring is found to possess a natural mulch 
or loose top layer of soil forming a natural seed-bed. In 
some districts, where untilled fields are sown, the stubble 
which holds the snow during the winter is burned off in 
the spring before seeding. 

Until recently, but little or no attempt was made to 
apply manure or fertilizers to the land, and the grain fields 
were cropped year after year without anything being added 
to them. Of late, however, with the introduction of mixed 
farming, farm-yard manure has come to be more commonly 
used, particularly on the lighter soils. The manure is 
spread upon the summer fallow, root-grounds, etc., some- 



44 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

what thinly by means of a machine known as a manure 
spreader. This practice has been found to increase the 
yield of the crops on soils which have long been cultivated 
and thus to add to the profits of farming. It is, there- 
fore, doubtless destined to be much more generally adopted 
in the future. 

On account of the low rain-fall, moisture limits the 
yield of grain per acre. The bare fallow, or some modi- 
fication of it, is therefore resorted to once in from two to 
five years, more often in the dryer districts and less often 
in the more humid ones. The summer fallow is the basic 
practice of dry farming. Its purpose is to store moisture 
in the soil by preventing its utilization by growing plants, 
and by conserving it in the soil by means of a soil mulch 
created by surface tillage. The surface tillage breaks the 
capillary tubes in the soil and so lessens evaporation. 

In older districts, the summer fallow has a double func- 
tion, for it is not only used to conserve moisture but also 
to control weeds. Among the annual weeds which have 
proved to be pests are Wild Oats (Avena fatua) and vari- 
ous members of the Mustard family ; and, among the per- 
ennials, Sow Thistle (8onchus arvensis), Canada Thistle 
(Cnicus arvensis), and Quackgrass (Agropyron re pens). 
The very dry parts of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan 
are troubled with the Eussian Thistle (Salsola Kali). 
Practically all of the noxious weeds of the West have been 
introduced either directly or indirectly from Europe. 

Seed-wheat, before being sown, is usually cleaned by 
passing it through a fanning mill which, by means of sieves 
and screens and a blast of wind, removes the weed seeds, 
smut-balls, and other impurities, and also small and 
shrunken kernels of wheat The seed wheat is then sub- 
jected to treatment with formalin, which is a 40 per cent, 
solution of formaldehyde. This is mixed with water in 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 45 

the proportions of one pound of formalin to forty gallons 
of water, and the mixture is then sprayed carefully over 
the seed or the seed is passed through the liquid by means 
of a smut machine. The purpose of this treatment is to 
kill any spores of the Stinking Smut Fungus (Tilletia 
footens) which may be clinging to the kernels and which, 
if not destroyed, might germinate on the kernels in the 
soil, infect the seedlings, and cause smut-balls instead of 
sound kernels to be produced in the heads of the diseased 
plants. When there is any doubt as to the germinating 
ability of seed-wheat, the wheat is tested for germination 
either at home on the farm or in seed-testing laboratories 
provided by the Dominion or Provincial Departments of 
Agriculture. 

The seed-wheat is sown by using large drills which are 
from eight to ten feet wide and which are drawn either 
singly by a team of four or more horses, or several together 
by an engine driven by gasolene or kerosene. These drills 
are so constructed that they force the seed evenly into the 
ground in rows which are from six to seven inches apart. 
The depth of sowing can be regulated and is usually from 
one to three inches below the surface. Seeding is usually 
completed between the middle of April and the tenth day of 
May, April seeding being preferred when soil and climatic 
conditions permit of its being undertaken. The seed is 
sown at the rate of from three-quarters to two bushels per 
acre, the smallest quantity being used on the lighter soils 
in the dryest districts and the largest quantity upon the 
heaviest and richest soils in the more northerly humid dis- 
tricts. Under most conditions, the amount of seed usually 
sown is between one and one and a half bushels. 

The wheat grower endeavors to prepare the land to be 
sown so that it shall be well stored with moisture, free from 
weeds, firm, and mellow. After seeding in such soil at a 



46 ESSAYS ON "WHEAT 

depth of from one to three inches, the depth varying with 
the soil's moisture contents, the land is generally firmed 
down hy using a packer and then harrowed to create a 
mulch to lessen the evaporation of moisture. 

The seedlings appear ahove the ground in from four to 
ten days after seeding, the period hefore emergence vary- 
ing with conditions of moisture and temperature. In 
some places, the land is again harrowed after the plants 
have appeared above the ground, the purpose of this sec- 
ond harrowing being either to kill the small weeds that 
may appear at this time or to replace the mulch which may 
have been destroyed by rains. 

The crop usually heads out during the first half of July 
and ripens between the tenth of August and the twentieth 
of September. 

The crop is harvested slightly before it has attained per- 
fect maturity by means of self-binders. These machines 
are hauled either by teams of four or six horses, or a num- 
ber of them may be drawn by a tractor. Each binder cuts 
a width of from six to eight feet and, at the same time, ties 
the grain into bundles or sheaves. The sheaves measure 
from ten to twelve inches in diameter and, as soon as they 
have been tied, are thrown to the ground. They are then 
placed in stooks or shocks by men who follow the binders 
as closely as possible. The purpose of stooking is three- 
fold: (1) to assist the drying or curing of the sheaves, 
(2) to lessen the danger to the grain of serious injury from 
weathering, and (3) to facilitate the further filling of the 
grains in the heads. 

The grain is separated from the straw by means of large 
threshing machines driven by tractors and having a capac- 
ity of from 500 to 2,000 bushels per day. In the past, the 
straw on the large wheat farms has been considered to be a 
useless by-product, and the great straw piles which dot the 





o p 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 47 

prairie after the threshing season (except for small por- 
tions saved for bedding horses, feeding, etc.) have usually 
been burned. The straw-pile fires reflected against the 
clouds at night in the autumn are well known everywhere 
in the West and form a strange and unexpected sight to 
newcomers from Europe where straw is of so much value. 
The recent development of mixed farming, however, offers 
in western Canada an opportunity for the utilization of 
straw to a much greater extent than hitherto as roughage 
for stock feed. 

On large farms, the threshing is done directly from the 
stooks which are hauled in wagons from the places in the 
fields where they were set up straight to the threshing 
machines. The stooks may be loaded on to a wagon me- 
chanically by means of stook-loaders, or they may be 
pitched by men into bundle racks. The threshing is car- 
ried out as soon as possible after the bundles have become 
sufficiently dry to pass through the machine without diffi- 
culty and after the grain has become sufficiently dry to be 
safely stored in bulk. If threshed when too moist, the 
grain may heat in storage and thereby be injured for com- 
mercial purposes. On the smaller farms, when for any 
reason threshing may be delayed, stacking is sometimes re- 
sorted to. This permits of fall tillage being undertaken 
at once and provides safe storage for the sheaves until a 
threshing machine becomes available. 

The harvesting and threshing season is the busiest part 
of the year in western Canada. To assist in relieving the 
labor shortage which is always felt at this time, some 
20,000 to 30,000 extra harvesters are annually brought to 
the Prairie Provinces from the east of the Dominion and 
from the United States. 

The grain, after it has been threshed, may be stored in 
temporary granaries on the farm or it may be hauled at 



48 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

once from tlie threshing machine to the country elevator or 
to a loading platform on a railway siding. 

In the West, the standing crops are sometimes destroyed 
locally in summertime by violent hailstorms which in ex- 
treme instances have been known to rain down hailstones 
the size of hens' eggs.^* Usually the area ruined by a 
hailstorm is several miles in length but seldom more than 
a mile in width. To compensate for the destruction 
wrought by the ice-balls, a system of cooperative hail insur- 
ance has been introduced in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and 
many private hail insurance companies also carry on busi- 
ness in all parts of the West. 

The western plains, in general, are very level and free 
from large trees, and hence are easy to break with the 
plow. The soil is thick and rich in humus and gives a 
good crop from the first. The chief difficulties of wheat 
raising arise from temporary droughts in summer, drying 
winds, early fall frosts, occasional severe attacks of the 
Black Stem Rust disease, and the already mentioned local 
hailstorms. Eain, however, seldom falls in too large a 
quantity and the weather during the harvesting and thresh- 
ing season is usually dry and bright. There is no more 
exhilarating sight in the West than the prospect of the 
binders at work on the sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, with 
the golden grain gleaming under the August sun and above 
and about all the cloudless blue dome of heaven. And 
when the last sheaf has been cut and the binders are silent, 

1* This is no exaggeration. Photographs showing hailstones and 
fowls' eggs of equal size were exhibited by Professor J. W. Shipley to 
the Physics section at the Winnipeg meeting of the British Associa- 
tion held in 1909. Vide J. W. Shipley, On the Size of Hailstones 
observed during a storm in Western Canada, Reports of the British 
Association, 1909, p. 400. Some of the hailstones " were larger than 
hens' eggs. At the center of one hailstone a small black fly was 
found." 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 49 

how splendid is the view across the gently rolling stubhle 
fields : stook beyond stook, stook beyond stook, for a quarter 
of a mile, for half a mile, and still more stooks as far as 
the eye can see, stooks cresting the distant horizon, ten 
thousand stooks all waiting to be threshed and each with its 
promise of bread, the gift of the 'New World to the Old. 
The unbroken expanses of the prairie create within one a 
sense of freedom which is best known only to those who 
dwell far from crowded cities, who plow and sow and reap, 
and whose daily toil causes them to commune uncon- 
sciously with I^ature and thus to absorb something of her 
simplicity and her charm. 

III. The Great Wheat Funnel 

In order to meet the ever-growing requirements of west- 
ern Canada for travel and transportation, a complex sys- 
tem of railways has grown up with ramifications extending 
for many thousands of miles. The principal railroads 
tapping the wheat-lands are the Canadian Pacific, the Ca- 
nadian Northern, and the Grand Trunk Pacific. Their 
main lines all focus upon Winnipeg so that this city has 
become, as it were, the converging point of a great wheat 
funnel, the spout of which leads to the water-front of Lake 
Superior. Through Winnipeg, each working day of the 
crop year 1915-16, on the average, there passed more than 
one thousand cars of wheat. ^^ The accompanying dia- 
gram (rig. 8) shows the eastbound movement of western 
Canada wheat in the calendar year 1913. An inspection 
of it reveals the fact that most of the 1913 wheat, after 
passing by rail from Winnipeg to Port Arthur and Fort 
William, was conveyed by water to Montreal and Buffalo, 

15 W. E. Milner, President's Address in Eighth Annual Report of 
the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, September, 1916, p. 26. 



50 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 




WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 51 

and that from these two latter cities it was then dispatched 
to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River or hy 
routes leading to the ports of St. John, Halifax, Portland, 
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. 

IV. The Hudson Bay Railway 

In 1811, the Selkirk settlers entered Canada via the 
Hudson Bay, and the Bay remained for many decades the 
almost exclusive means of communication between the Bed 
River Settlement and the British Islands. Through the 
Bay, as we have seen, came with the settlers the first seed- 
wheat sown in western Canada ; and through the Bay sailed 
each year, for nearly two centuries, the rich argosies of the 
Hudson's Bay Company, outward bound with great car- 
goes of fur and inward bound with food-stuffs and manu- 
factured goods. Shortly before 1870, the Hudson's Bay 
Company, taking advantage of the improved means of 
transportation in the Great Plains region of the United 
States, changed its trading route -from the old one of the 
Hudson Bay to a new one passing south through Winnipeg. 
Thus it came about that for many years the icy waters 
of the Hudson Bay were almost deserted by commerce. 
However, at the present moment, there is being built the 
Hudson Bay Railway which, in all-Manitoban territory, 
will give direct communication with the sea. This new 
line is to pass from The Pas to Port l^elson, a distance of 
410 miles, of which 320 have already been completed. In 
the near future it is doubtless destined to carry to the sea- 
board a large amount of grain raised in northern Sas- 
katchewan and Alberta. For the Province of Manitoba, 
the prospect, for at least four months in the year, of a 
shorter sea route to the British market than that from 



52 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

^ew Yorkj marks a curious return to the historic condi- 
tions which were so familiar to the Selkirk settlers. 

Y. TJie Shipment of Bulk Wheat Through the 
Panama Canal 

The opening of the Panama Canal has presented the 
possibility of shipping Canadian wheat to Europe from 
ports on the Pacific Coast. However, until a year ago, no 
attempt to ship wheat in bulk via the Panama Canal had 
been made, and it was not known whether or not Ijulk wheat 
could be safely transported through the tropics by this 
route without arriving at its destination in a heating con- 
dition.i6 Dr. F. J. Birchard and Mr. A. W. Alcock, of 
the Dominion Grain Eesearch Laboratory, therefore car- 
ried out a test experiment on bulk shipment in the fall 
of 1917. 

One hundred thousand bushels of wheat for shipment 
were collected at various points in Alberta, graded by gov- 
ernment inspectors, carefully tested for moisture, and then 
stowed in bulk in the hold of a steamer at Vancouver. 
The forward hold, into which the main bulk of the wheat 
was loaded, was one hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and 
eighteen feet six inches deep. Each parcel of wheat of a 
particular grade, after being delivered to the vessel, was 
trimmed so that its surface was practically horizontal, and 
then separating cloths were spread over the top so as to 
divide it from the succeeding layer. Rows of electrical 
resistance thermometers were embedded in each layer of 
the wheat so that all changes of temperature in every part 

16 For a number of years wheat has been shipped south from Seattle 
and Portland (Oregon) round the Cape to Europe in bags. Doubt- 
less, however, the ventilation of wheat in bags is better than that of 
wheat in bulk. Wheat is shipped in bags from Australia and India 
to England. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 53 

of the cargo could be observed by instruments on deck. 
One of the experimenters accompanied the boat from Van- 
couver down the Pacific Coast, through the Panama Canal, 
and across the Atlantic to London, the voyage occupying 
three and a half months. The shipment of the wheat was 
successfully made, for the Superintendent who supervised 
the discharge of the wheat at London reported that only 
160 bushels, or less than 0.2 per cent, of the total cargo, 
had been damaged. It is evident, therefore, that bulk 
wheat, although subjected to a much higher temperature 
and to a much longer voyage when transported to England 
by the Panama route than when transported by the usual 
routes from the Atlantic coast, can yet be safely brought 
to its destination. Whether or not the new route for ship- 
ping wheat will be much used in the future is uncertain ; 
but it seems not unlikely that a portion of the wheat pro- 
duced in northern Alberta may be more cheaply trans- 
ported by this route than by any other. 

YI. Elevators 

To store the grain produced on the farm before it can 
be exported or otherwise used, special warehouses, known 
as elevators, are provided. The wheat is elevated into 
these buildings by machinery and deposited in bins. The 
bottom of the shipping bin is always situated at some dis- 
tance above the level of the ground and opens into a mov- 
able spout on the exterior of the elevator. When it is de- 
sired to ship wheat away from an elevator, advantage is 
taken of the flowing property of the grain in bulk: the 
spout is opened and the grain falls through it by gravity 
and passes into a box-car or the hold of a steamer. 

Elevators are of several kinds. There are country ele- 
vators along the railways for receiving grain from the 



54 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

fanners for storage before it has been inspected, terminal 
elevators wbicb receive or sbip grain and which are located 
at points declared to be terminal so far as inspection is con- 
cerned, hospital elevators which are used for cleaning or 
specially treating rejected or damaged grain and which 
are equipped with special machinery for this purpose, and 
mill elevators which are used or operated as part of a plant 
engaged in the manufacture of grain products. ^''^ In the 
Western Inspection Division of Canada, for the license 
year 1916-17, there were 1,384 railway stations having 
elevators, the number of elevators was 3,338, and the total 
capacity of all the elevators together was 163,144,000 
bushels. ^^ 

VII. The Loading Platform 

A country railway station, in addition to its elevators, 
is provided with a loading platform, a wooden structure 
on a siding on to which a farmer can drive his team, and 
from which he can shovel the grain into a car. When the 
grain has been loaded, the farmer can either sell it on the 
spot as track grain, or consign it to a commission firm at 
Winnipeg or Fort WiUiam to be sold for his account, or he 
may ship it to a terminal elevator to be stored for his ac- 
count. By using the platform, he can save the elevator 
charges which amount to about $17 per car and avoid 
negotiations with the elevator companies. On the other 
hand, he has the trouble of securing the car, of making 
arrangements to sell the grain, and of loading the grain 
into the car with his own labor. Some farmers therefore 

17 For definitions of elevators vide The Canada Grain Act, 1912, 
Section 2. 

18 Capacity of elevators by Provinces, license year 1916-17, in 
Supplement to the Cereal Maps of Manitoba^ Saskatchewan, and Al- 
berta, Ottawa, 1917, p. 16. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 65 

use the loading platform and others do not. E'aturally, 
the elevator owners look upon loading platforms with dis- 
favor, and railway operators regard them as tending to 
delay the cars unduly. Their popularity with the farm- 
ers, however, is shown by the fact that their number has 
now been increased to upwards of 1,600 and that about 30 
per cent, of the grain shipped from the country points is 
loaded from them.^® 

VIII. The Old Flat Warehouse 

Elevators first came into existence about the year 1880. 
Before this time the only receptacles for wheat along the 
railway line were small flat warehouses built by grain 
dealers. Farmers brought their wheat to these ware- 
houses in sacks and sold it to the dealers, who shipped it 
in car lots to Winnipeg for sale. The flat warehouse was 
divided into two by a passageway running across the 
middle from the front to the rear, and each end was sub- 
divided into bins. The bottom of the bins was on a level 
with the ground. The machinery consisted of a scale in 
the passageway, a trolley for pulling the sacks, and a 
small four-wheeled grain cart for handling the wheat in 
bulk. The cart was propelled by hand along a light rail 
which ran through the passageway to the railway track. 
When a dealer wished to ship his grain away, he pulled or 
pushed it to a railway car in his grain cart. The handling 
of grain is much more efficiently done by an elevator than 
by the old flat warehouse, and on this account the latter has 
fallen into disuse. ^^ 

19 Cf. E. Magill, Grain Inspection in Canada, Department of Trade 
and Commerce, Ottawa, 1914, pp. 11-14. 
^oiUd,, p. 11. 



56 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

IX. The Country Elevator 

The country elevators in 1916-17, in tlie three Prairie 
Provinces, numbered 3,287, and the average capacity of 
each was about 30,000 bushels. Either as single build- 
ings or very often as a row of buildings along the railway 
track, they form a characteristic feature of western rail- 
way stations. They are usually constructed of wood with 
galvanized iron plates on the outside. This covering 
serves to keep out water and diminishes the risk of fire. 

The farmer hauls his load of wheat from the farm to a 
country elevator in bulk in an open wagon or, if it is win- 
ter time, in an open sleigh. ^^ On arriving at the elevator, 
he drives his wagon on to the scales which are raised upon 
a platform about six feet from the level of the ground; 
and here he obtains the gross weight of his wagon and its 
load. The elevator operator, with the aid of a crank, then 
moves the wagon in such a fashion that the front end is 
raised and the back end is lowered. He then pulls up the 
door of the grain pit and removes the end-board of the 
wagon, so that the grain runs out from the back of the 
wagon into the pit. The empty wagon is then weighed, 
and its weight when subtracted from the gross weight of 
the load and wagon previously obtained, gives the weight 
of the grain deposited in the elevator. If the elevator has 
a cleaner, the wheat, after passing into the pit, may have 
its screenings removed, and these may be taken home by 
the farmer to be used as feed. Finally, the wheat is trans- 
ferred from the pit to the bins by means of an elevator 
composed of buckets attached to an endless rubber belt 

21 The wheat when being loaded on to a wagon or sleigh is scooped 
into a grain-tight box holding from 60 to 100 bushels. The inven- 
tion of the grain-tight box has relieved the farmer of the necessity of 
hauling his wheat to the elevator in sacks. 




Bo 

^C0 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 57 

driven by a gasolene engine. Each country elevator con- 
tains a number of bins so that the different varieties and 
grades of grains may retain their identity, and so that a 
farmer may have his wheat specially binned if he so wishes. 
One of the bins in the elevator is known as the shipping 
hin. Its base is about sixteen feet above the railway track 
and a few feet above the level of the top of a box-car. The 
storage bins which vary in number from eight to twenty- 
two, and each of which may hold from 300 to about 4,000 
bushels, have their bases about ^yq feet above the level of 
the ground. When the time comes to ship away the wheat 
contained in one of the storage bins, the wheat is let out 
through a hole in the bottom of the bin so that it falls into 
the wheat pit. From this place it is elevated by the 
buckets on the revolving rubber belt to the top of the ele- 
vator where it is caused to fall into the shipping bin. The 
bottom of this bin is connected with a spout which can be 
opened at will to allow the wheat to pass into a box-car. 

X. Box-Cars 

When it is desired to ship out the grain from a country 
elevator, a box-car is placed alongside of the elevator just 
by the spout, the two outer side doors are slid open, and 
a grain door, from about five to six and a half feet high 
according to the size of the car, is fixed against each open- 
ing from within so as to leave a space of about two feet 
above. The grain, carried by the force of gravity and di- 
rected by the spout leading from the shipping bin, is then 
made to flow laterally into the car over the top of the grain 
door facing the elevator. The roof of a box-car is always 
a fixture and grain cannot therefore be put into such a car 
directly from above. Whilst the grain is flowing into the 
car — a process which occupies about twenty minutes — 



68 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the spout is directed by the operator to eacli end of the car 
in turn, so that the filling is more or less evenly accom- 
plished. If necessary, however, when the car has been 
filled, the operator climbs into the car over the top of one 
of the grain doors on his hands and knees and levels the 
load with a scoop shovel. After the load has been levelled, 
the outer doors on the sides of the car are slid back into 
position so as to cover the grain doors and entirely block 
the two openings. The railway agent then seals the side 
doors, whereupon the car is ready for transportation to 
Winnipeg for inspection. 

The depth of the wheat in a loaded car is a few inches 
less than the height of the grain doors and varies from 
four feet ten inches to six feet four inches, according to 
the size of the car. Between the wheat and the roof of the 
car there is always a space left, two feet or more high, in 
which a man may move when he is obtaining samples of 
the grain for the government inspector at Winnipeg. 

Most of the box-cars now in use for transporting grain 
are of two sizes only, the smaller cars having a capacity 
of 60,000 pounds and the larger ones of 80,000 pounds, 
so that for the former the full load is 1,000 bushels and 
for the latter about 1,350 bushels. During the last two 
years, however, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company 
has been building still larger cars with a capacity of 
94,000 pounds, or about 1,650 bushels. The loads in all 
cases may be exceeded by shippers to the extent of 10 per 
cent, of the car's capacity without special rates being 
charged. 

Box-cars require to be strongly built, for wheat in bulk, 
like water, exerts an enormous pressure upon the sides and 
base of its container. In constructing the grain doors, the 
original intention was that they should not be nailed or 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 59 

fastened in any way when being set in position, so tliat they 
might be lifted on the arrival of the car at a terminal el^ 
vator and thus allow the grain to flow out beneath them. 
However, it very frequently happens in practice, and ap- 
pears to be now the rule, that farmers or elevator operators 
nail up the grain doors from the inside of the car before 
the car is filled. The object in view in putting in the nails 
is to prevent absolutely the grain doors slipping during 
the switching or shunting of the cars, and thereby to make 
quite sure that no leakage of grain shall occur whilst the 
car is in transit. When a car with nailed doors arrives at 
a terminal elevator at Fort William or Port Arthur, it is 
necessary, in order to liberate the grain, to smash in the 
doors with an ax, for the doors cannot be pressed back 
owing to the weight of the grain or lifted owing to the 
presence of unseen nails. The destruction of grain doors 
at the terminal elevators takes place on a great scale and 
thousands of new doors to replace the old need to be con- 
structed every year. 

In the busy season, when grain is flowing freely from the 
prairie-land to Winnipeg on its way to the lake front, grain 
trains are made up at the divisional railway points ; and 
night and day such trains, often composed of from forty 
to forty-five heavily-laden box-cars, form an east-bound 
procession, one train following another unceasingly. Thus 
the transportation of the wheat crop makes very heavy de- 
mands upon the railways every year. To give some idea 
of what these demands may be, it is only necessary to men- 
tion that following the great crop of 1915, one thousand 
cars of wheat arrived in Winnipeg each working day 
throughout a whole year, and that the wheat inspected by 
the Western Grain Inspection Division amounted to 
338,425,200 bushels. 



60 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



XI. Terminal Elevators 



Relatively to the country elevators, the terminal ele- 
vators where inspected wheat is stored ready for shipment, 
are few ; but they make up for their small number by their 
immense size. Upon the immigrant^ passing west for the 
first time and on the look-out for wheat-fields, the imposing 
bulk and curious form of the terminal elevators at Port 
Arthur and Fort William make a never-to-be-forgotten 
impression. Thirteen such elevators have a combined ca- 
pacity of 41,750,000 bushels or, on the average, of 3,000,- 
000 bushels each. Terminal elevators are usually con- 
structed of concrete, a building material which, although 
not beautiful to look at, is yet well suited to its purpose ; 
for it gives to the elevators great strength, so that they may 
resist the pressure of the grain in the bins, and, at the 
same time, renders them non-inflammable with a conse- 
quent saving in insurance against fire. 

In the mind of the immigrant, when first he beholds one 
of the huge terminal elevators, some very curious questions 
are apt to arise, for while he has heard of the vast crops 
of wheat which are produced annually in western Canada, 
he, of necessity, is ignorant of the means whereby the 
grain is handled for export : " I wonder what all those 
great big pillars are for? They seem to be quite solid; 
but I never before saw a building with such thick pillars 
as those. They don't seem to be supporting much above 
them. Ah ! perhaps they are hollow ; but why have they 
not got windows? How do people see when working in 
them? I suppose they are lit up with electric light. I 
wonder whether they have spiral staircases ? I suppose 
the bins are on different floors in each column; but how 
on earth is the wheat put into them and taken out again ? " 
And so forth ; but the immigrant does not stand alone, for 



WHEAT IN WESTEKlSr CANADA 61 

many a man who has been long resident in western Canada 
knows as little about the workings of a terminal elevator 
as he does about the mechanism of his own digestive sys- 
tem. On passing a mighty building, beautifully special- 
ized to handle grain in the most efficient and economical 
manner, some there are who regard the pile with no more 
than the mild curiosity with which, to use an expression of 
Martin Luther, a cow looks at a new gate : the mystery in 
concrete is tacitly accepted as insoluble; but others with 
more enquiring minds actively desire to learn how it car- 
ries on its functions, and it is for these that the following 
pages have been written. 

A terminal elevator at Fort William or Port Arthur is 
situated upon the lake front, so that the grain which it con- 
tains may be passed directly into the hold of a lake 
steamer. It is usually divided into two parts : the working 
house and the storage bins. The working house is rectan- 
gular in shape, much higher than it is long or broad, and 
has numerous windows in its upper half. Here the wheat 
is received from the box-cars, elevated, weighed, tempo- 
rarily stored in smaller bins, and cleaned. Here, too, are 
situated the shipping bins from which the wheat passes into 
the freight vessels. The storage bins, on the other hand, 
are great concrete cylinders which stand vertically upright 
and are connected by concrete where they are in contact. 
There may be several parallel rows of them. The space 
between any four adjacent cylinders is not wasted but is 
used as a smaller bin. Kunning over the top of each row 
of bins is a passageway which leads from the upper part 
of the working house. The grain is conveyed along these 
passages and is deposited in the bins from above. Each 
bin can be filled from the bottom to the top, and a single 
cylinder may hold as much as 30,000 bushels of grain. 
Under each row of bins there is a tunnel leading to the 



62 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

base of the working house. The wheat is let out of a bin 
through a hole in its base. The capacity of an elevator 
depends on the size and number of its cylindrical storage 
bins. The bins are cylindrical because engineers have 
found that cylindrical bins resist the pressure of the grain 
within them better, and require less concrete in their 
frame, than bins of any other form. In order to compre- 
hend more fully the working of a terminal elevator, let us 
follow a car-load of wheat into the building, observe what 
is done with it, and watch it being shipped away. 

A car of wheat which has been inspected at Winnipeg 
is brought to the elevator. The seals on its two outer 
side doors are broken, the grain doors, if nailed up, are 
smashed with an ax, and a large part of the grain then 
pours out of the car. A man then enters the car and, by 
means of a wooden scoop pulled by chains from the work- 
ing house, quickly evacuates all the wheat which has re- 
mained. The emptying of a car occupies about ten min- 
utes. The wheat falls down on each side of the car 
through a grating into an opening in the ground known 
as a receiving pit. From the pit the wheat is conveyed 
on a revolving belt or conveyor which is lower along the 
center than at the sides, to the base of the working house 
where it is elevated to the top of the house by means of 
buckets attached to an endless rubber belt. On arriving 
at the top of the house, the wheat is weighed in a scale, 
the whole car-load at one time. It is then stored tem- 
porarily in one of the many small bins available in the 
working house, cleaned if necessary, and treated in any 
way desired. It is then transferred from floor to floor 
by spouts until it reaches the top of the storage bins. 
Here it is carried along on the top of another revolving 
belt which runs in the passageway over the top of the 
storage bins ; and it is diverted into whichever of the bins 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 63 

the operator wishes to fill. The different grades of wheat 
are kept in separate bins. If, therefore, our car-load of 
wheat has been graded at Winnipeg as No. 1 [Northern, it 
would be deposited in a No. 1 Northern bin, if as No. 2 
Northern, then in a No. 2 Northern bin; and so forth. 
When a car-load of wheat has been put in a bin with other 
wheat of the same grade, it loses its identity and cannot 
again be recovered. Wheat in a terminal elevator is there- 
fore stored in bulk according to grade. This storage in 
bulk greatly simplifies the work of the elevator and cheap- 
ens the cost of handling the grain. The wheat is not only 
stored in bulk according to grade but is also bought and 
sold for export in the same manner. We have seen our 
car-load of wheat pass into the elevator, be weighed, 
cleaned, and deposited in a storage bin, but here we lose 
it as such: if it was No. 1 Northern, we simply know 
that it has been mixed with other wheat in a No. 1 North- 
ern bin. Wheat which has arrived at the elevator after 
the formation of ice has brought navigation to a close, 
i. e., after the middle of the second week in December, 
must be kept in storage until the next May when naviga- 
tion is again resumed or be shipped away on an all-rail 
route. 

When it is desired to ship away, say, 100,000 bushels 
of No. 1 Northern, the wheat in certain of the No. 1 
Northern storage bins is let out through their bases into 
the tunnels, conveyed by belts running horizontally along 
the tunnels to the bottom of the working house, elevated 
by buckets to the top of the working house, and there 
weighed in the scales. After being weighed, it is sent 
down the elevator through a system of spouts into one or 
more of the shipping bins, and from there it is conveyed 
by spouts on the outside of the elevator into the hold of a 
vessel or into a railway car. 



64 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

The passage of wheat through a terminal elevator is by 
far the cheapest and most efficient means of taking it from 
the box cars and getting it on board a lake f reighi>boat, for 
loading simply consists of letting the wheat out from a 
shipping bin through a spout so that it flows by its own 
weight into the hold. The rapidity with which the cargo 
boats can be loaded from a terminal elevator is truly as- 
tonishing. The average loading run to any boat is about 
30,000 bushels an hour ; but the record speed for loading at 
the head of the lakes is 200,000 bushels in one hour and 
fifty-five minutes. 

There are thirteen terminal elevators at Port Arthur 
and Fort William, one at Vancouver and one at the 
Hudson Bay. In addition there are four so-called interior 
terminal elevators. These are situated on the prairie far 
from any lake or ocean port, at Transcona (near Winni- 
peg), Calgary, Saskatoon, and Moosejaw. The Trans- 
cona elevator was built by the Canadian Pacific Kailway 
to give reserve storage and so relieve the pressure in the 
elevators at the lake front when such relief is needed. 
It also serves to supply part of the grain milled between 
Transcona and the lake front. The terminal elevators at 
Calgary, Saskatoon, and Moosejaw have been erected 
by the Government, not to take the place of the lake term- 
inal elevators for grain being shipped east but with a 
view to supplying the needs of the Hudson Bay and 
Panama routes when these come to be used. At the same 
time, they bring the work of inspection somewhat nearer 
the grain-growing area, give additional storage capacity 
in times of emergency, and provide useful hospital ap- 
paratus for drying wheat damaged by rain or snow be- 
fore it is sent on a long railway journey to the lake 
front.^^ 

22 Cf. Robert Magill, loc. cit., pp. 54-56. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 65 

XII. Lake Steamers 

Upon the Great Lakes, there is a large fleet of boats 
especially constructed to carry commodities in bulk, such 
as coal, iron ore, and grain. The distance between ports 
is short and the lake boats, as compared with ocean-going 
boats, therefore, require but little coal for each journey. 
In consequence, the amount of space devoted to coal in 
any ship is small whilst the cargo space is relatively 
large. 

Each vessel is an elongated shell with its machinery at 
the rear end and the living quarters for the crew placed 
on deck. The hull is divided by two or three transverse 
walls from the bottom of the vessel to the deck, so that 
the number of holds is usually three or four. The deck 
completely covers these holds, and is provided along the cen- 
ter with a series of hatches which may be opened for the 
introduction or removal of the cargo. When a vessel is 
being loaded with wheat, the grain is spouted into the 
holds from the shipping bins of an elevator until all the 
holds are full. Three or four spouts may be discharging 
wheat at one and the same time. When a boat has been 
loaded, the hatches are put on so as to close the holds 
tightly and thus prevent rain or snow or lake water from 
entering and damaging the cargo. From time to time, 
great storms rage upon the lakes, and many of these vessels 
have been wrecked. 

" The capacities of these ships," says Piper, " are 
enormous. An average car-load of wheat is a little more 
than 1,200 bushels. The average train load consists of 
about forty cars or 48,000 bushels. The larger boats will 
carry over 300,000 bushels of wheat equivalent to seven 
train loads, or about three hundred cars. The largest 
boat now on the lakes will carry nine train loads. The 



QQ ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

best record the Canadian Pacific Railway lias yet reached 
is to haul into Fort William a little more than 1,000 cars 
of grain a day. Therefore only three or four of these big 
ships a day are required to take care of all the grain this 
railway can deliver. These ships are loaded at the rate 
of from 75,000 to 100,000 bushels per hour and unloaded 
at the rate of from 20,000 to 40,000 bushels per hour, de- 
pending on the machinery equipment of the elevators per- 
forming the service." ^^ 

Transportation of freight by water is always cheaper 
than by rail. It is the recognition of this principle that 
has led to the development of Fort William and Port 
Arthur, and which has brought into existence the busy 
fleet of freighters on the Great Lakes. A single large 
vessel costs only as much as a few miles of railway track 
and it moves u^ on a medium which is forever renewed 
by l^ature herself, so that it never wears out or needs 
repairing by man. On a water route, there is no invest- 
ment in a roadbed or in rails, bridges, telegraph lines, or 
costly terminal yards. The relative cheapness of lake 
as compared with rail transportation is shown by a cal- 
culation of Piper who states that one of the big lake boats 
"carrying six or seven train loads, will run eleven or 
twelve miles an hour or about as fast as the average speed 
of freight trains, with a coal and labor cost of about one-- 
quarter as much as on the railroad." ^* 

XIII. The Lake Shippers' Clearance Association 

At Port William and Port Arthur there are now four- 
teen public terminal elevators all of which deliver grain 

23 C. B. Piper, Principles of the Grain Trade, The Empire Ele- 
vator Company Limited, Winnipeg, 2nd edition, 1917, pp. 19-20. 
24/6id., p. 20. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 67 

to boats. Let us suppose that a shipper of a large cargo 
of wheat has received warehouse receipts showing that the 
grain to be loaded is distributed in all these elevators. 
If now it were necessary for him to send his boat first to 
one elevator to receive a few thousand bushels, and then 
to another elevator for a few more thousand bushels, and 
so forth, much valuable time would be consumed and the 
cost of loading would be considerably increased. More- 
over, each small amount loaded would require to be treated 
as a separate cargo, and the documents and records would 
be greatly multiplied. 

To make it unnecessary for ships to be moved continu- 
ally from one elevator to another, to save clerical work, 
and thus to facilitate the dispatch of the grain from the 
lake front, there has been formed a voluntary organiza- 
tion known as the Lake Shippers' Clearance Association. 
The shippers who are members of the Association exchange 
warehouse receipts with one another, and thus each ship- 
per concentrates his cargo which he desires to load, in 
one or two elevators. If, for instance, a shipper had 
warehouse receipts for 200,000 bushels of No. 1 E'orthern 
of which 50,000 bushels were contained in each of four 
elevators, he would notify the office of the Association, and 
the manager would make an arrangement that the shipper 
should load his boat with 200,000 bushels of ^o. 1 :N'orth- 
ern from one only of the four elevators. The shipper's 
warehouse receipts for No. 1 Northern in three of the 
elevators would be exchanged for warehouse receipts for 
No. 1 Northern belonging to other shippers whose grain 
was in the particular elevator from which it was ar- 
ranged that the shipper should draw his whole cargo. 

It is evident that the Lake Shippers' Clearance Associa- 
tion carries out its function in such a way as to save 



68 ESSAYS 0:N^ WHEAT 

both, time and labor in the transportation of grain. 
Its work in the end is therefore beneficial to the whole 
community. 

XIV. The Canada Grain Act 

As the grain business in western Canada grew in volume 
and importance, the farmers often complained of the 
treatment they received from the elevator companies. 
They accused the elevators of unjust weighing and grad- 
ing, of paying prices that were too low and exacting 
charges for handling the grain in the elevators that were 
too high, of not cleaning the grain, of refusing to give 
special bins, of pooling profits, of killing competition, and 
of forming monopolies. They also complained that rail- 
way companies discriminated among the applicants in the 
distribution of cars, and that buyers of grain in various 
ways took advantage of the grain growers. This dissatis- 
faction caused Parliament to regulate the business of 
handling grain by passing a succession of measures. 
Finally this legislation was codified in the Canada Grain 
Act of 1912.25 

The Canada Grain Act creates a Board of Grain Com- 
missioners to administer the Act, defines the statutory 
grades of wheat, etc., arranges for the establishment of 
commercial grades, and regulates the grading and weigh- 
ing of grain. It also contains provisions concerning the 
construction of loading platforms, the operation of ele- 
vators, the distribution of railway cars, and the trading 
between the farmer on the one hand and the track buyer 
and commission merchant on the other. The Act requires 
each person buying grain, and each person or company op- 

25 Cf. Robert Magill, Grain Inspection in Canada, Department of 
Trade and Commerce, Ottawa, 1914, p. 14. 



WHEAT IN WESTEEN CANADA 69 

erating a country elevator, to take out an annual licence 
and to furnish bonds for such an amount as the TSoard of 
Grain Commissioners may demand; and it further pro- 
vides the machinery for the investigation of all complaints 
made in v^riting under oath. The whole tendency of the 
Act is to give the farmer as nearly as can be accom- 
plished an absolute guarantee of fair dealing. 

XV. The Sample Market 

Many years ago, both in the United States and Canada, 
wheat was sold by sample only; but, as the grain trade 
grew in volume and complexity, this proved unsatisfac- 
tory. It was then that the grading system was intro- 
duced, first at Minneapolis and Duluth and, subsequently, 
about 1884, at Winnipeg. The grading system permits 
of wheat being sold and stored according to grades, the 
grades being determined by government inspectors. 

For the last thirty ^^ears, the wheat of western Canada 
has been sold almost entirely by grade, and sales by 
sample have been relatively few and unimportant. How- 
ever, a few years ago, a desire was expressed on the part 
of a number of farmers that, while the sale of wheat by 
grade should be continued, facilities should also be given 
for selling by sample. As a result, by Order-in-Council 
signed at Ottawa in August, 191Y, sample trading was 
approved. Sample rooms are now provided by the govern- 
ment in the Grain Exchange at Winnipeg, and at Eort 
William and Port Arthur. 

A farmer wishing to sell his grain by sample, marks 
his shipping bill when shipping his grain, in care of the 
sample market. On arrival of the consignment at Winni- 
peg a sample is drawn from the car by the government 
samplers and is inspected in the usual way. A part of 



YO ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

it is then taken to the sample market at Winnipeg and 
another part is expressed to the sample room at Eort 
William and Port Arthur. The car from which the sam- 
ple has been taken, is sent from Winnipeg to the head 
of the lakes, the journey of 420 miles usually occupying 
several days. If, on arrival at Fort William or Port 
Arthur, the grain in the meantime has not been sold by 
sample, it is binned in a terminal elevator in the usual 
way, in accordance with the grade given to it at Winni- 
peg. It can then only be sold by grade. To the sample 
market grain merchants come, examine the samples on 
exhibit at their leisure, form their own judgment as to 
values, and, if they are so inclined, make competitive bids 
for the wheat on sale. On the other hand, samples may 
be exposed without any bids being made. 

The sample market in western Canada has only been 
organized on a government basis during the last two 
years, and, up to the present, has been but little used. 
However, the two years have been war years during which 
the price of wheat has been fixed. Whether or not, when 
normal conditions in the grain trade are resumed, selling 
by sample will prove popular and thereby affect selling 
by grade in any considerable degree, remains to be re- 
vealed by the passing years. 

XVI. TJie Grades of Grain 

The grades or classes of wheat are numerous and varied, 
for this cereal, when marketed by the farmer, is by no 
means uniform in its admixtures, its condition, or, if clean 
and in sound condition, in its milling qualities. 

The admixtures of wheat may consist of other cereals 
such as barley and oats, or of flaxseed, or of various 
weed seeds, such as those of Wild Mustard, Wild Oats, 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA Tl 

Pigweed, and Stinkweed. These admixtures must be re- 
moved before the wheat can be milled into flour, and their 
presence therefore decreases the value of the wheat to 
the buyer. Whenever a sample of wheat is graded, the 
admixtures are separated by sieving and weighed. The 
percentage of admixtures is then determined, and this is 
called setting the dockage. The amount of the dockage 
influences the price at which the wheat may be sold, and 
its accurate determination is therefore a very important 
part of grain inspection. 

The condition of wheat is affected by various causes. 
Among these are such diseases as smut, wheat scab, and 
rust. Smut balls are diseased kernels filled with several 
millions of black spores, the reproductive bodies of the 
smut fungus. When smutted grain is threshed, many of 
the smut balls break and scatter their spores over the 
sound kernels so that the latter become blackened and dirty 
in appearance. Moreover, smutted grain has a very evil 
odor, smelling like decaying fish. Smutted wheat, there- 
fore, must be thoroughly scoured before it can be milled. 
Wheat scab causes wheat kernels to take on a pink ap- 
pearance. Eusted kernels are usually quite sound al- 
though shriveled, but it sometimes happens that they be- 
come black-pointed owing to the presence, at the stalk end 
of the kernel, of a little pustule of black spores of the rust 
fungus. Wheat may contain too large a percentage of 
moisture and thus be tough, damp, or wet. It may also 
be frosted, dirty, musty, heating, or bin-burnt. Frosted 
grains are known by their wrinkled skin. Heating and 
burning in the bin so that the grains may even become 
charred, only take place when the wheat contains too 
much moisture. 

The different varieties of wheat, when free from ad- 
mixtures and sound, differ from one another in their yield 



72 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

of flour botli as to quality and quantity. Different lots 
of a single variety of hard spring wheat^ such as E-ed 
rife or Marquis, may vary, with the conditions under 
which they have been produced, in weight per bushel, in 
plumpness, in color, and in milling and baking qualities. 
Hard spring wheat may also contain a smaller or greater 
number of soft kernels of some other variety, with a pro- 
portionate reduction in the grade. The supreme test of 
wheat is its milling and baking qualities. Judged by this 
test, however, the crop of even a single variety is never 
quite uniform, and the difference between two distinct 
varieties is often very great. 

When wheat is classified according to its freedom from 
admixtures, its soundness, and its milling and baking 
qualities as indicated by hardness and softness, the result- 
ing classes are known as grades. Let us now consider 
the nature of these grades for western wheat. 

The statutory grades are the highest grades, are defined 
in the Grain Act, and do not vary with the crop. There 
are four of these grades for spring wheat. 

No. 1 Manitoba Hard. This wheat must be sound and 
well cleaned, weighing not less than 60 pounds to the 
bushel, and must be composed of at least 75 per cent, of 
Hard Red Fife or Marquis.^^ 

No. 1 Manitoba Northern. This wheat must be sound 
and well cleaned, weighing not less than 60 pounds to 
the bushel, and must be composed of at least 60 per cent, 
of Hard Eed Fife or Marquis. 

26 The definitions here given are taken from the Canada Grain Act 
of 1912, with the exception of the words or Marquis. The definitions 
were made when Red Fife was the dominant wheat in the West ; but, 
soon after Marquis began to be largely grown, it became necessary to 
make provision for the new wheat in the statutory grades. The 
words or Marquis were therefore added after Red Fife by an order 
of the Board of Grain Commissioners. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA '73 

No. 2 Manitoba Northern. This wheat must be sound 
and reasonably clean, of good milling qualities and fit 
for warehousing, weighing not less than 58 pounds to 
the bushel, and must be composed of at least 45 per cent, 
of Hard Eed Fife or Marquis. 

No. S Manitoba Northern. Any wheat not good enough 
to be graded ISFo. 2 Manitoba N'orthern is graded No. 3 
Manitoba Northern at the discretion of the Inspector. ^^ 

The commercial grades are grades which on account 
of climatic or other conditions cannot be included in the 
grades established by the Grain Act. The grain of one 
year often differs so much from that of another that the 
lower or commercial grades require to be defined annually. 
The commercial grades are set by the Western Grain 
Standards Board and at present are three in number: 
No. 4 Wheat, No. 5 Wheat, and l^o. 6 Wheat. 

The term no grade is applied to all good grain that has 
an excessiye amount of moisture in that it is tough, damp, 
or wet, or grain w^hich is otherwise out of condition and 
unfit for warehousing. 

The term condemned grain is applied to all grain that 
is in a heating condition or that is badly bin-burnt of 
whatever grade it might otherwise be. 

The term rejected grain is applied to all grain that is 
unsound, musty, dirty, smutty or sprouted, or that con- 
tains a large admixture of other kinds of grain, weeds, 
or wild oats, or that from any other cause is unfit to be 
classed under any of the recognized grades. 

We thus see that there are seven chief grades of west- 
ern hard red spring wheat, which, with the word Mani- 
toba left out as is the custom among farmers and grain 
dealers, are as follows: 

27 There is also the grade No. 1 Hard White Fife, but very little 
of this wheat is grown in the West. 



74 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



:n'o. 


1 Hard, 


^0. 


1 Northern, 


No. 


2 Northern, 


No. 


3 Northern, 


No. 


4 Wheat, 


No. 


5 Wheat, 


No. 


6 Wheat. 



statutory grades defined by Parlia- 
ment. 



commercial grades defined by the 
Standards Board. 

Each of the three grades of Northern and each of the 
three commercial grades is subdivided, for the wheat in 
any of these grades may fall under the general categories 
of no grade, condemned, or rejected. Thus, for instance, 
there are at present six divisions of the grade No. 1 North- 
em as follows : 

No. 1 Northern, 

No. 1 Northern Tough, 

No. 1 Northern Damp, 

No. 1 Northern Smutty, 

No. 1 Northern — Eejected on account of seeds, 

No. 1 Northern — Eejected on account of heat. 
We thus obtain, in addition to the one grade for No. 1 
Hard, thirty-six grades. But the list of grades is not ex- 
hausted with these, for we may have grades consisting of 
combinations such as: 

No. 1 Northern Damp and Smutty, 

No. 1 Northern Smutty Eejected on account of seeds ; 
and so forth. 

In the autumn of the great rust year, 1916, the Stand- 
ards Board defined for the crop year 1916-17 an addi- 
tional grade known as No. 4 Special. This grade in- 
cluded grain which had been badly shriveled by rust. 
Its minimum weight per measured bushel was only 54 
pounds. There is no such grade this year, 1918-19. 

There is a grade which is generally recognized by buy- 
ers and sellers known as Teed, but it has not been defined 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA T5 

hj the Standards Board. It includes any grain which is 
not good enough to be put into 'No. 6 Wheat. G-rain 
known as Feed, as the name suggests, is used for feeding 
animals. 

XYII. The Grading of Grain 

An essential element in the grain business of western 
Canada is the classifying or grading of grain by govern- 
ment inspectors. The wheat is bought, sold, transported, 
and stored in bulk according to grade. If wheat which 
comes into the market is graded too low, the farmer suffers 
an undeserved loss and the miller or grain buyer reaps an 
undeserved gain. If, on the other hand, the wheat is 
graded too high, the positions of the farmer and miller 
are reversed : the farmer gains and the miller loses. The 
exact price of all grain sold in the Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change depends on the grade, there being a spread of sev- 
eral cents a bushel between any lower grade and the next 
higher one. Since the question of grade enters into prac- 
tically every grain transaction in western Canada, the 
importance of the accurate determination of grade and 
the great responsibility resting upon the shoulders of the 
government inspectors at once become obvious. 

The government inspector is in a very delicate position. 
On the one hand he is liable to receive complaints from 
farmers for grading wheat too low and in thus being too 
severe in his judgments, while, on the other hand, he is 
equally liable to receive complaints from millers for grad- 
ing wheat too high and in thus being too lenient in his 
judgments. In addition to this, he may be criticized by 
the grain merchants either as too severe or as too lenient 
according as they themselves are sellers or buyers. Thus 
the inspector is in the position of an arbitrator who daily 



T6 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

must make decisions of great importance which are binding 
upon two opposed and powerful interests. For him, there- 
fore, as he values his peace of mind and his security as a 
government official, there is only one safe path to tread, 
the path of absolute impartiality. In order to secure this 
impartiality in the determination of grades, a grading 
system has been evolved of such a kind that neither the 
samplers who take the samples of wheat from the box- 
cars nor the inspectors who grade the samples, have the 
least idea whence the grain has come, to whom it belongs, 
or to whom it is consigned. The inspectors must there- 
fore grade the grain simply on its merits in accordance 
with the standards set up for their guidance. 

The task of determining the grade of wheat is by no 
means an easy one. The inspectors, says Magill, ^^ have 
to inspect an enormous volume of grain per car unit, 
and in certain seasons they must work rapidly and con- 
tinuously during daylight. They must never be bewild- 
ered either by the variety or continuity in which nature 
revels, or by the multiplicity of grades of which the terms 
are neither very distinct nor unambiguous. They have 
few mechanical aids. Their senses must always be keen, 
and their judgment always sound, for one error will be 
remembered against years of efficient service. Their work 
is of supreme importance, for their verdict fixes which 
rate per bushel, out of several quoted on the market, the 
seller will receive, and the grain is stored, transported, and 
sold both at home and abroad on their certificate." ^^ 

For the whole of Canada there are two inspection divi- 
sions. The Western Inspection Division stretches from 
the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, and the Eastern 
Division from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. 

28 R. Magill, Grain Inspection in Canada, Department of Trade 
and Commerce, Ottawa, 1914, p. 20. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA TY 

The law and practice of grading are the same in both; 
but, as the varieties of grain grown in the West are differ- 
ent from those grown in the East, the inspectors of the 
Western Division have nothing to do with the grain grown 
in the Eastern Division and the inspectors in the Eastern 
Division have nothing to do with the grain grown in the 
Western Division. The Chief Inspector alone has juris- 
diction in both divisions. 

The Chief Inspector for the whole Dominion is Mr. 
George Serls, a gentleman who by his integrity has won 
the confidence of all who are interested in the grain trade. 
At Winnipeg the Inspector is Mr. J. D. Eraser, ^^ and the 
number of Deputy Inspectors is thirteen, ten of whom 
work together at the grading tables at any one time. In 
addition, the inspection staff includes a considerable num- 
ber of samplers, yard foremen, clerks, and other assistants. 
In order to become eligible for the position of inspector 
or deputy inspector, the candidate must first pass exam- 
inations conducted by a Board of Examiners with the aid 
of the Chief Inspector. The examiners '' are experi- 
enced grain men, men of integrity, ability, and standing, 
and men who, though wealthy, are willing to render their 
service in the interests of the grain industry. The exam- 
inations are conducted annually, and they are thoroughly 
practical tests of the ability to grade. Usually, though 
not always, the candidates are men who have been working 
as samplers, track foremen, weighmen, etc., and usually 
not more than fifty per cent, of the candidates succeed 
in passing. After passing the examination, the candidate 
is appointed on the recommendation of the Chief Inspector. 
ISTeither in the examination, the recommendation, nor the 

29 To Mr. Eraser I am much indebted for showing me through the 
grading rooms and for giving me a detailed explanation of the 
grading system. 



T8 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

appointment have political considerations any place, and 
this applies throughout the service.'' ^^ 

If the Government were to attempt to grade wheat at 
the country railway stations from which the wheat is 
shipped in the first place, an army of samplers and skilled 
graders would be required instead of a few, the cost of 
grading would be greatly increased, and it would be diffi- 
cult to give the work of grain inspection the necessary 
uniformity. It so happens that most of the grain for ex- 
port passes on its way to the head of the lakes through 
Winnipeg; and it has therefore been found convenient 
to concentrate the work of grading in this city. Other 
inspections, however, are made at Calgary, Moose jaw, and 
Saskatoon, at Fort William, Port Arthur, and Duluth, 
the formula for inspection being everywhere the same. 

The Government has rented rooms in the building of the 
Winnipeg Grain Exchange, and in these rooms most of 
the wheat in western Canada, and all that passes through 
Winnipeg, is graded. Here, too, the Chief Inspector for 
the Dominion has his office. 

When a grain train from the West arrives at Winnipeg, 
a sample of wheat is taken from each car, the other de- 
tails necessary for issuing certificates are collected in the 
railway yards, and both samples and details are taken 
to the inspection office in the Grain Exchange. The in- 
spectors determine the grade of wheat in any car from the 
sample supplied them, and it is therefore very necessary 
that each sample shall be properly secured. The length 
of time between harvesting and the close of navigation at 
the head of the lakes is only about seventy days. It is 
therefore essential that box-cars containing grain shall be 
delayed for as short a time as possible at Winnipeg. 
Moreover, hundreds of cars arrive in Winnipeg during the 

80 R. Magill, loc. dt. 



WHEAT IN WESTEEN CANADA 79 

busy season every twenty-four hours. The work of sam- 
pling, therefore, has to be carried out at all hours, by 
night and day, both on Sundays and week days. An 
accurate and detailed description of the manner in which 
the samplers and graders carry out their work has been 
given by Eobert Magill, the Secretary of the Grain Ex- 
change, and this will now be quoted. 

^' The samplers work together in gangs in shifts of 
eight hours. They work in gangs because teard work 
is more efficient than solitary effort. Usually the gang 
consists of fourteen men, four of whom are track foremen, 
eight are samplers, one is a car opener and one a car 
sealer. . . . The track foremen are responsible for the 
efficiency of the work, each foreman usually looking after 
two samplers. 

" On the arrival of the train, the conductor leaves the 
car bills in the railway company's yard office. The train 
clerk of the inspection department makes a list of these 
bills, showing the car numbers, the name of the shipper, the 
shipping station, the destination, and the name of the per- 
son or company to whom the car is billed. These de- 
tails are necessary for the issuing of the certificates. He 
takes this list to the yard office of the inspection depart- 
ment, and hands it to the clerk there. This clerk is also a 
Government employee, and his work is to prepare the 
sheets needed in the inspection office. These sheets are 
two in number, a larger and a smaller. The larger sheet 
shows all the details mentioned, and the smaller, a carbon 
copy, only shows the car number and a column for the 
grade. Both these sheets are sent to the inspection office 
with the corresponding samples, but the larger sheet with 
all the details is given to the clerical staff who issue the 
certificates, while only the smaller sheet is given to the 
inspectors who grade the grain. In this way all knowledge 



80 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

of ownership of the grain is kept from the man who grades 
it. He does not know whose grain he is grading; his 
information is limited to the number of the car. 

" When the train is readv the work begins immediately. 
A train consists of about forty-five cars, and the gang 
should finish with it in less than one hour. The car 
opener leads off, opening the car doors, and placing an 
empty sample bag in each car. These bags are well 
cleaned beforehand, so that no foreign matter shall be 
mixed in the sample. 

" The sampler mounts the ladder, enters the car on 
the top of the grain, and drives his probe into the grain 
several times and at several points. He empties the grain 
each time out of the probe on to a cloth laid on the grain 
near the car door. 

" The space between the grain and the roof is not 
deep. A line, called the load line, marked on the in- 
side of the car, shows how deep the car should be loaded. 
It sometimes happens that a car is loaded so full that a 
fair sample cannot be taken. In such cases the fact of 
the overloading is put on the ticket by the sign ^ I.H./ 
which means ^ hold for inspection.' Such cars are pro- 
visionally inspected at Winnipeg. The car numbers are 
sent to Fort William with instructions to inspect while 
being unloaded. 

" Less frequently cars are ' plugged,' loaded, that is to 
say, with intent to get some low grade grain past the 
inspectors by concealing it somewhere in the car. The 
sampler may discover the fraud, and if he does not the in- 
spector at the terminal point usually does. Plugging is a 
losing game for the shipper, for the whole car is graded 
according to the quality of the worst grain found in it. 

" If the car is divided by partitions, a sample is taken 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 81 

out of eacli partition, otherwise the unit of quantity for 
sampling is the car. 

^^ The track foreman mounts the ladder, leans over the 
car door, watches the probing, mixes up the sample so as 
to secure an average, puts it into the sample bag, writes 
the sample ticket, inserts the ticket in the sample bag, and 
on descending hangs the bag on the car door. 

" His name is stamped on the back of the ticket, and on 
the face he writes the car number, the date, the load line, 
the initials of the sampler, and any other notations neces- 
sary, e. g. leakages, etc. Should any question arise later 
about the sample, the ticket shows who did the work, the 
notations made at the time, and the name of the foreman 
responsible. 

" When the sampling is finished, the bags are collected, 
counted, and taken to the Government office in the yard. 
The numbers on the sample tickets are checked with those 
on the track sheet by the car office clerk, and both the 
samples and the sheets are sent immediately to the in- 
spection office. 

" The car sealer follows the samplers, closing and seal- 
ing the doors. Every car is sealed at the shipping point by 
the railway agent. The object of sealing is, of course, to 
protect the grain on the way. At Winnipeg only one door 
of the car is opened, and therefore only one seal is broken. 
The car sealer reseals that door, and the seals are not 
touched again until the car is placed at the elevator to be 
unlocked. 

" When the samples reach the office they are set out on 
the tables according to number, those ending in — 2 — 
4, etc., being put together. Each inspector then takes his 
sheet, the small one prepared by the car office clerk, and 
picks out the samples the numbers of which correspond 



82 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

with the numbers on his sheet, and he places them in large 
boxes in rotation as they appear on the sheets. 

" The inspection proper then begins. As good light is 
essential to grading, the inspection begins at 9 a. m. and 
ends at 3 p. m. The north light being the best, each in- 
spector does his grading at a north window. The actual 
grading can only be done by men legally qualified and ap- 
pointed either as deputy inspector or inspector. Inspec- 
tion turns mainly on these points: the quality of the 
grain, the condition, and the admixtures. The quality 
depends on soundness, color, weight, and the percentage 
of hard wheat. The condition depends on moisture con- 
tent (which in doubtful cases is tested mechanically), 
heat, etc. The admixtures are tested by a process of 
sieving and weighing called setting the dockage. In this 
process either the cleaned grain or the resulting screen- 
ings can be weighed. Both methods are permissible and 
both give accuracy. At Winnipeg the screenings are 
weighed, while at Fort William the cleaned grain is 
weighed. 

" When the grading is finished, the samples are put into 
tins, and placed systematically in shelves. They are kept 
so long as it is considered possible that they may be re- 
quired, and then they are sold. 

'' The inspector's sheets are handed over to the clerical 
staff, and the records made, and the certificates of grade 
issued." 

To the above description of the work of inspection 
at Winnipeg, a few supplementary details will now be 
added. 

The railway cars are distinguished from one another 
by numbers painted with large figures on both their sides ; 
but they are not labeled with tickets showing their con- 
tents, origin, etc. Cars in which goods have been shipped 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 83 

have both doors sealed at the shipping point, so that on 
the arrival of a train at Winnipeg it is impossible with- 
out breaking the seals to look into the cars and see what 
is inside them. It is therefore sometimes asked : how, in 
the case of a mixed train in which some of the cars con- 
tain grain and other merchandise, does the car opener 
know which cars to open? The answer lies in the in- 
foi*mation given by the train conductor. The conductor 
has a way hill for every car on his train, and the way bills 
provide him with particulars of the origin of each car, 
its destination, the shipper, the contents, etc. From these 
way bills he writes out on a card a train list which shows 
the number of each car and the nature of the contents. 
On arrival of the train in the railway yard, he takes his 
way bills and his train list to the railway yard office. 
The way bills are then given to the clerk in the inspection 
yard office and the train list is put into the hands of the 
car opener. , The car opener then goes out to the train 
ahead of the samplers and yard foremen, looks at his train 
list, and opens every car containing wheat, rye, oats, barley 
and flax, but leaves untouched all those containing mer- 
chandise, such as coal, wood, machinery, etc. It is thus 
the conductor's train list which enables the car opener to 
do his work with the necessary discrimination. 

The seals on railway cars are composed of a narrow 
band of soft metal with a perforation at one end and a 
bulb at the other. After the ribbon is put through the 
hasp of the closed door, the end with the perforation is 
pushed into an opening in the bulb. Two tiny split rings, 
like those used for holding keys, hidden in the bulb, then 
come into play and lock the two ends of the ribbon to- 
gether. It is impossible to get at these rings without 
breaking open the seals. The seals are all numbered, and 
the railway company keeps a list of all those supplied to 



84 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the inspection office. As soon as the samplers have fin- 
ished their work, the car closer pushes the outer door of 
each car into the closed position and reseals it. As soon 
as all the cars have been resealed, he puts on each end of 
the train a ticket which states that the work of sampling 
has been finished. This gives notice to the locomotive 
engineers that the train may be taken on to Fort William 
or Port Arthur. All trains containing grain are sampled 
immediately on their arrival at Winnipeg whatever may 
be the time of day or night, and the longest grain trains 
are finished with in about an hour. The work of sampling 
therefore does not delay a train at Winnipeg unduly. 

The prohe, referred to as being used for obtaining sam- 
ples from box-cars, is also known as a sampler but perhaps 
more commonly as a stahher. A stabber consists of a 
double brass tube which is pointed at its base and closed 
at both ends. Its length is about 65 inches and its 
diameter 2 inches. Both tubes are perforated on one side 
by eleven equidistant coincident apertures each of which 
is about three and a half inches long and one inch wide. 
Between each two adjacent apertures are unperf orated 
portions of the tubes about two inches long. The inner 
tube is divided into eleven chambers by plugs at intervals 
so that each aperture leads into a single chamber. The in- 
ner tube can be revolved within the outer one by means 
of a handle at the top of the instrument. By turning the 
handle, and thus revolving the inner tube, the apertures 
leading into the inner tube can be closed or opened. 

A sampler, when using his stabber in a car of wheat, 
first closes its apertures by turning the handle. He then 
pushes his instrument vertically downwards into the grain. 
The deeper the stabber is pushed into the grain, the 
greater is the resistance which the grain offers. When 
the point of the stabber is near the car floor, considerable 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA B5 

pressure is required to drive it home, but only a small part 
of the stabber is left unburied above the grain. At this 
stage in the proceeding, therefore, the sampler often ceases 
to use his hands and prepares for a new effort by putting 
his foot upon the top of the stabber and setting his back 
against the roof of the car. He then exerts the muscles of 
his body and one leg and at the same time brings to his 
aid the whole weight of his body. If a car is very full, 
the working space between the grain and the roof of the 
car may be so small that the sampler may find it necessary 
first to drive the stabber for some distance into the grain 
more or less obliquely and then to force it into a vertical 
position. When the pointed end of the stabber has reached 
the bottom of the car, the upper end by this time being 
often almost buried, the sampler turns the handle of the 
instrument, thereby allowing the grain from eleven differ- 
ent levels to rush into the eleven chambers in the interior 
of the inner tube. The chambers having been filled, he 
again turns the handle and thus closes the apertures. He 
then pulls out the stabber from the grain in which it has 
been immersed, holds it lengthwise just above a long piece 
of cloth by the grain door, and turns its handle so as 
to open its apertures once more. Immediately the grain 
falls out of the eleven chambers on to the cloth where it 
forms a row of eleven corresponding heaps. At least 
seven stabs are made in each car of wheat and the number 
is usually nine. The cloth by the grain door thus comes 
to have deposited on it at least seventy-seven small heaps of 
grain and usually ninety-nine such heaps. Formerly the 
stabbers were not plugged and there was but one chamber 
in each. The wheat was then poured out of a stabber 
through its open handle, the bottom wheat coming out 
last. The plugged stabber is an improvement on the un- 
plugged but takes more time to empty. 



86 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

As the space between the top of the grain and the roof of 
a box-car is often very limited, tall men are at a disad- 
vantage in the work of sampling. Taking samples re- 
quires considerable physical strength and endurance, and 
cannot be undertaken by weaklings. The men chosen 
as samplers, therefore, are of medium height and sturdy 
build. 

The amount of wheat taken out of each car to fill the 
sample bag is from two and a half to three pounds, and, 
relatively to a car-load which varies from 60,000 to 100,- 
000 pounds, is very small indeed. 

^ot a day passes without from one to six cars being 
found unevenly filled or plugged. When a car has been 
found to be unevenly filled, several separate samples are 
taken from the load. Thus in one case which came under 
the observation of the writer, a sample taken from the up- 
per layers of the load graded ISTo. 3 Northern, another 
sample taken from the bottom layers at one end of the car 
graded 'No. 4 Smutty, a third sample taken from the 
bottom of the other end of the car also graded No. 4 
Smutty, while a fourth sample representing an average 
for the whole car graded No. 4 Smutty. The shipper 
would have done better with his grain had he put a parti- 
tion in the car and loaded his ]^o. 3 l^orthern at one end of 
the car and his No. 4 Smutty at the other end. The in- 
spectors are aware that uneven filling may be due to acci- 
dent as well as to design, and they use their judgment in 
penalizing the shipper accordingly. 

If a car is too full, it is impossible to use the stabber 
properly. Thus, if the space in which the grader must 
work is only 10 inches high at one end of the car, 30 
inches in the middle, and 12 inches at the other end, it 
is impossible for the sampler to obtain a satisfactory sam- 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 87 

pie. The car is then marked for inspection at Fort Wil- 
liam or Port Arthur. The samples are then taken during 
unloading as the grain is pouring out of the car into the 
grain pit just prior to its passing into a terminal elevator. 

Ten graders usually work side by side at the long 
window table in the grading room. Standard samples of 
the six grades, 'No. 1 to ISTo. 6, are kept in boxes in front of 
each grader, so that he may refer to them for compari- 
son whenever he so desires. A handful of wheat from 
the sample of each car inspected is put into a pail by each 
grader, the grades being kept separate. The pails are 
emptied monthly. Thus monthly averages can be com- 
pared for the information of the inspectors. 

The first operation in the work of grading is to deter- 
mine the weight of the g^ain per measured bushel. A 
piece of brown paper about eighteen inches square is 
spread out on the grading table, and upon it is set an 
imperial quart measure, made of brass and attached to 
a beam balance. The sample to be graded is then poured 
from its bag into the quart measure until the latter over- 
flows. The grain is then stroked off level at the top. 
The balance is then suspended from the hand and the 
weight moved along the beam until equilibrium has been 
established. The number of pounds weight the wheat 
weighs per bushel is then read off directly from the scale 
on the beam. As we have seen, No. 1 Hard and No. 1 
Northern must weigh not less than 60 pounds to the 
bushel, and No. 2 Northern not less than 5& pounds to the 
bushel. Weight per bushel is also taken into account in 
connection with other grades, and its determination is 
therefore an important feature of grading. When the 
weight per bushel has been taken, the wheat in the quart 
measure is poured out on to the sheet of brown paper. 



88 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Usually the paper is then taken up and the wheat upon it 
poured back into the sample bag. The weight per bushel 
is recorded on the ticket in the bag. 

When there is the least chance that the amount of dock- 
age may influence the weight per bushel to the extent of 
affecting the grade, the dockage is removed and the weight 
of grain per measured bushel again determined. 

To estimate the amount of the admixtures of weed seeds 
and oats, etc., i. e., to set the dockage, the sample is poured 
out on to the sheet of brown paper and then thoroughly 
mixed by hand. Then one pound of the wheat is put 
into a hopper and weighed out on a balance. The in- 
spector then takes a standard sieve with ten meshes to 
the inch each way and pours the pound of wheat into it. 
The sieve is then shaken until the weed seeds have come 
through, leaving the wheat behind. If buckwheat is pres- 
ent, this is left behind with the wheat, and the wheat 
and buckwheat are then sieved again with another sieve 
of special construction having triangular holes. Through 
these holes the buckwheat passes, leaving the wheat be- 
hind. Then, if oats or wild oats are present with the 
wheat, the oats and wheat are shaken in another sieve with 
larger rounded holes. Through these holes the wheat 
passes, leaving the oats and wild oats behind. The dock- 
age is then collected and weighed on the same balance 
that was used for weighing out the original pound of 
wheat. As soon as equilibrium has been established, the 
percentage of dockage for the wheat is read off directly 
from the scale on the beam bearing the weight and at 
once recorded on the sample ticket. By weighing the 
dockage which is relatively of small mass, there is less 
chance of making a spill than when weighing the cleaned 
grain. If any of the dockage should be spilled before 
weighing, the spill will operate in favor of the farmer. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 89 

In testing for the amount of moisture, the wheat is 
spread out on the brown paper sheet and felt with the 
fingers. Dry wheat slips through the fingers more easily 
than wheat containing a considerable proportion of mois- 
ture. Tough or damp wheat gives a clammy impression. 
Most samples of wheat can be classified at once as dry, 
tough, or damp by the feel. All doubtful samples are 
tested for amount of moisture in a Brown-Duvel moisture 
tester. The test is carried out as follows : One hundred 
grams of wheat are weighed out very carefully and put 
into a glass retort with 150 cubic centimeters of engine 
oil. Then a thermometer, passing through the rubber 
cork of the flask, is inserted into the mixture of wheat and 
oil. The switch of an electric heater is then turned on, 
and the temperature of the contents of the flask is raised to 
180 °C. The oil and wheat thus come to be raised to a 
temperature far above the boiling point of water. As 
a consequence, the moisture in the kernels is turned into 
steam. The steam is conducted through a glass tube which 
passes into a tank of running water. Here the steam is 
all condensed and the water arising from it runs into a 
glass tube graduated according to percentages of moisture 
in 100 grams of wheat. This crop year, 1918-19, wheat 
having up to 14 per cent, of moisture is passed as dry 
grain, wheat having over 14 per cent, moisture and up to 
17 per cent, is graded as tough, and wheat with more than 
17 per cent, moisture is graded as damp. About ninety 
tests with the Brown-Duvel apparatus for determining 
moisture are made every day. 

The grader, as we have seen, has mechanical aids at 
his disposal in the weighing machine, the sieve, and the 
moisture tester; but for the rest of his work he must use 
his sense of sight, his sense of touch, and his sense of smell. 
The farmer tends to see the good kernels in the grain 



90 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

which he hauls to the country elevator, but it is the business 
of the government grader to find the poor kernels in each 
sample and to estimate their number and nature relatively 
to the good ones. He has to take note of the proportion of 
shriveled grains, immature grains, smutted grains, pink 
grains, soft grains, frosted grains, etc., and in forming 
his judgment must rely on his own keen senses, his ex- 
pert knowledge, and his experience. 

The charge for inspecting a car of wheat is 60 cents, 
and this, added to 40 cents for weighing, makes a total 
inspection and weighing charge to the farmer of one 
dollar per car. 

An inspector, after grading a sample, at once writes 
down his report on his sheet containing car numbers. 
This sheet eventually goes to the clerical staff who prepare 
the certificates of grade. 

The wheat composing any sample,* after being graded, 
is put into a tin box which is nine inches long, three inches 
high, and three inches wide. The box is filled, and, when 
full, holds about two pounds of grain. Each box is 
labeled outside with the car number, date, etc., and con- 
tains within the original sample ticket which now sets 
forth the car number, the initials of the sampler, the name 
of the yard foreman who put the sample in the bag, the 
depth of the wheat in the car, the grade, the amount of 
dockage, the grader's name, and the dates of taking the 
sample and grading. The boxes are carefully filed on 
shelves in the sample room. The sample room, which 
adjoins the grading room, at any one time contains about 
60,000 tin boxes which are kept filled for as long as 
they are likely to be needed for reference and are then 
emptied. An official goes through the sample room and 
empties a certain number of boxes each day and thus 
makes room for new ones coming daily from the grading 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 



91 



room. The contents of the wheat boxes are emptied into a 
sack so that thev are all mixed together. This mixed 
grain, made up of all grades, is then sold by the Govern- 
ment and the proceeds go toward paying the expenses 
of the Grain Inspection Department. The grade at which 
the mixed grain is usually sold is No. 3 Northern. Any 
one may bid for the grain who wishes. A considerable 
proportion of it is disposed of to a local milling company 
who fetch so much away each day. 

The large amount of work which falls to the Western 
Grain Inspection Division is shown by the following sta- 
tistics.^^ 



Numher of Cars Inspected in the Crop Year 1916-17 



Point of 
Inspection 


Wheat 


Oats 


Bar- 
ley 


Flax 


Eye 


Screen 
ings 


Totals 


Winnipeg . . 
Saskatoon . . 

Calgary 

Moosejaw . . . 
Medicine Hat 
Duluth 


147,773 

5,377 
3,939 
4,634 
2,710 

2,585 


42,840 
1,331 
3,175 

822 

25 

612 


7,204 

42 

757 

21 

4 

147 


5,822 
234 
48 
121 
104 
113 


52 

"n 

5 

62 


433 

9 
10 


204,124 
6,984 
7,999 
5,613 
2,843 
3,519 


Totals .... 


167,018 


48,805 


8,175 


6,442 


190 


452 


231,082 



From the above Table the dominating position of Win- 
nipeg as a center of grain inspection may be readily per- 
ceived. For the crop year 1916-17, 147,773 cars of 
wheat out of a total of 167,018 were inspected in that city. 
During the busy season as many as 2,000 cars are often 
graded by the Winnipeg inspectors every day. 

31 The statistics are taken from the Ninth Annual Eeport (new 
series) of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, Winnipeg, Sept., 1917, 
pp. 85, 87. 



92 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



Number of Cars of Wheat Inspected in the Western Grain In- 
spection Division During the Crop Years Stated 



1908 70,527 cars 

1909 89,329 cars 

1910 81,506 cars 

1911 135,756 cars 

1912 125,969 cars 



1913 137,403 cars 

1914 95,926 cars 

1915 282,021 cars 

1916 167,018 cars 

1917 127,765 cars 



To show how the grades are distributed, the statistics 
for the grades for the crop years 1914, 1915, and 1916 
may be quoted. In 1915, the wheat crop was the largest 
ever obtained in the West, while in 1916 the crop suffered 
severely from the rust disease. 

Numher of Cars of Different Grades in the Crop Tears Stated 



Wheat 


1914 


1915 


1916 


Hard No. 1 

Northern No. 1 

Northern No. 2 


21 

16,152 

32,735 

23,057 

1 

3,833 

3,848 

15,990 

216 

60 

13 


2,126 

138,117 

49,110 

36,497 

1 

21,962 

9,336 

23,954 

742 

82 

94 


79 
18,261 
32,262 


Northern No. 3 

White rife 


30,207 


No Grade and Feed 

Reiected 


40,885 
3,171 


Commercial Grades 

Winter Wheat 


41,828 
166 


Oondemned 


93 


Others 


66 






Total cars 


95,926 


282,021 


167,018 



The importance of accurately determining the grades 
of car-loads of wheat is shown by the following Table 
which gives the price of wheat in cents per bushel for the 
chief grades for the crop year 1918-19. These prices 
were fixed by the Board of Grain Supervisors as a war 
measure; but corresponding differences in prices affect 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 



93 



the grades in normal years, when there is open competi- 
tion in huying and selling. The blanks in the table indi- 
cate prices that were not fixed. 

Fixed Prices in Cents per Bushel, for the Crop Year 1918-19, 
for Wheat in Store at Fort William or Port Arthur 



Straight 
grades 



Tough 



Rejected 

on account 

of seeds 



Smutty 



No. 1 Northern 
No. 2 Northern 
No. 3 Northern 
No. 4 Wheat. .. 
No. 5 Wheat... 
No. 6 Wheat.. . 



2241/2 
2211/2 
2171/2 
2111/2 
1991/2 
1901/2 



2I8I/2 
2151/2 
2091/2 



2141/2 
2111/2 
2O6I/2 



2151/2 

2121/2 
2O8I/2 



The difference in price between two grades is known 
as the spread. From the above Table, it is clear that 
the spread between the different grades is often consider- 
able. Thus, in respect to the straight grades, the spread 
is as follows : between ^o. 1 ]N"orthern and 'No. 2 xTorthern, 
3 cents per bushel ; between 'No. 3 N^orthern and No. 2 
N'orthern, 4 cents ; between No. 4 Wheat and ]^o. 3 North- 
ern, 6 cents ; between IN'o. 5 Wheat and ]N'o. 4 Wheat, 12 
cents; and between ]^o. 6 Wheat and Ts'o. 5, 9 cents per 
bushel. The spread between !N'o. 6 Wheat and No. i 
Northern in the straight grades amounts to 34 cents per 
bushel. The grades thus very materially affect the price 
which the farmer gets for his wheat, and it is not there- 
fore surprising that grades and grading are subjects in 
which he is keenly interested. 

XVIII. Inspection at Terminal Elevators 

One of the chief objects in grading grain is to classify 
the grain for bulk storage in the terminal elevators. The 



94 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

individual car-load is merged, as we have seen, in a bin 
containing grain of the same grade; and thus the cost 
of storage is lessened. It is highly important that the 
car-loads should be deposited in their right bins according 
to grade. 

The Winnipeg inspection governs the storage in the 
terminal elevators except in the following cases: (1) cars 
which were too full for proper sampling at Winnipeg, (2) 
cars that have been " plugged/' (3) cars that have gone out 
of condition, (4) cars on which reinspection has been 
asked, and (5) cars upon which an appeal to the Survey 
Board has been demanded. All these cars are sampled and 
inspected whilst being unloaded. 

Every evening the Winnipeg inspection office dispatches 
to Fort William by express train a sheet showing the car 
numbers of inspected cars, the grade, the dockage, the in- 
spector's notations, the shipping point, the destination, the 
party to whom the car is billed, and the number of the in- 
spector's certificate. As trains are broken up at Winni- 
peg, or between Winnipeg and Fort William, a new 
train sheet is made out at Fort William. This sheet is 
made from the car bills and from the Winnipeg sheet, 
and it shows the Winnipeg sheet number, the grade and 
notations, the elevator to which the car is sent, and the 
shipping point. ^^ 

- At Fort William a grade ticket is then made out for 
each car and nailed to the car. As the grain is pouring 
out from the car during unloading, an inspector takes 
samples at intervals with a ladle, mixes up the grain thus 
taken, and then decides whether or not the grade is the 
same as that on the grade ticket. Usually the grades, 
when thus checked over, are confirmed. Very exception- 
ally they are found to be different. In case of any altera- 
32 Vide R. Magill, loc. cit., p. 35. 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 95 

tion in grade, the Winnipeg Inspection oiBce is notified 
bj wire, and the Winnipeg grade after investigation may 
be altered. 

A report of all cars unloaded at each terminal elevator 
is made daily. The report shows the carrying company, 
the car number, the date, the Winnipeg sheet number, the 
Fort William sheet number, the grade, the dockage, the 
seal record, the condition of the car (damages, leaks, bulk- 
heads, etc.), the load line, the inspection notations as to 
grading, cleaning, etc., and the weighman's notation. 
One copy of the report is supplied to the elevator, one is 
sent to the Chief Inspector at Winnipeg, and one is re- 
tained in the inspection office at Fort William. The grain 
is taken into storage in the elevator just after unload- 
ing and is binned with other grain of the same grade. 
It is thus seen that the government keeps a most careful 
record of all grain entering each terminal elevator.^^ 

Wheat is not only graded into a terminal elevator but 
it is also graded out again. " Grading the grain as it is 
being loaded out of the elevators into the lake steamers," 
says Magill, " presents some difficulties not experienced in 
Winnipeg. It is easier to secure a fair average sample 
of the grain in a standing car, than to secure one out of a 
mass of grain rushing in several streams from a huge 
elevator into a steamer. Further, the car sample in Win- 
nipeg is graded in the central office and not in the rail- 
way yard, but grain being loaded into a steamer must be 
graded there and then. To sample the grain, send the 
sample to a central office and grade it there, might mean 
that the wrong grain would be loaded into the vessel, and 
the steamer started off with grain different from that called 
for by the shipper. To unload grain out of a vessel at Fort 
William would be difficult, as there are no marine legs, 

33 Vide R. Magill, loc. cit., p. 39. 



96 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

and to delay the steamer would add to the cost. The grain 
must be graded as it runs from bin to boat. 

" An inspector with assistants is placed in charge of 
each elevator, and he is held responsible for the grading 
out. The grain is sampled at three places: in the tun- 
nels as the grain runs from the storage bins to the work- 
ing house, on the floor of the working house, and on the 
steamer as it pours from the shipping bin into the hold. 

^^ If any grain is seen at any of these places which is 
not up to the required grade, the stream is stopped in- 
stantly. While the grade is given by the inspector in 
charge of the elevator, all the three samples are sent to 
the inspection oflice at Fort William and examined there. 
In this way the grading by the inspector in the elevator 
is checked by the grading of the inspector who has charge 
of all the inspection at the terminal points, Mr. Symes. 
A sample of every cargo with the Fort William inspection 
is also sent to the Chief Inspector at Winnipeg." ^* 

XIX. Reinspection 

The certificates of grade for each car-load are sent out 
to those who should receive them as soon as they have 
been written, and the corresponding samples are filed in the 
sample room. The owners of the grain, or their repre- 
sentatives, then have the privilege of examining the sam- 
ples in the sample room and thus of judging whether in 
their opinion the grades are satisfactory. Nearly all the 
samples which have been graded in the government grad- 
ing rooms thus come to be checked over privately. 

If the owner of the grain in a car, or his representative, 
is dissatisfied with the grade given by the Winnipeg in- 
spector, he may ask for reinspection. Owing to the fact 

34 R. Magill, loc cit., pp. 41-42. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA ^T 

that, as soon as a sample has been taken from any car, the 
car is dispatched to the head of the lakes without delay, it 
is necessary that reinspection of a car shall be made not 
at Winnipeg but at Tort William or Port Arthur. The 
negotiations to secure reinspection take place, therefore, 
whilst the car to be reinspected is moving forward to 
its destination. When a car is to be reinspected, the In- 
spection office at Fort William is notified, and, as soon 
as the car arrives, a new sample is taken from it and 
graded. There is no extra charge for reinspection. 

If, after reinspection, the owner of the grain is still 
dissatisfied, he may appeal to the Winnipeg Survey Board. 
The members of the Board are recommended for their 
positions by the Winnipeg Board of Trade and by the 
Ministers of Agriculture of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and 
Alberta ; and they are all appointed by the Board of Grain 
Commissioners. The rules and regulations of the Survey 
Board are made by the Grain Commission. No appeal 
can be made on grain which has lost its identity by being 
mixed with other grain. If the inspector's grade is con- 
firmed, the owner of the grain pays three dollars for the 
survey; but, if the grade is altered, there is no charge. 
A Survey Board, when once appointed, is independent 
during its period of office, and, in cases of contested grade, 
its verdict is final. 

When the crop is of high grade, very few appeals are 
made ; but, when the crop is of low grade, appeals may be 
as numerous as 2 per cent. Most of the appeals are made 
on what are known as line grades^ i. e., on samples which 
stand very high in a grade, near the line between its 
grade and the next higher one. When a sample is near 
a dividing line, the government inspector must decide the 
delicate question as to which grade the sample really be- 
longs. Here, occasionally, there is some room for a dif- 



98 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

ference of opinion even among experienced graders. If, 
for instance, wheat whicli has graded No. 5 Wheat is a 
very good sample of wheat in that grade and is evidently 
very near the line separating 'No. 4 Wheat from No. 5, 
on reinspection it may happen that another inspector may 
put it in JSTo. 4 Wheat; hut this second inspector will 
doubtless consider it to be only a very poor sample of 
this higher grade and only just worthy to be included 
in it. Of the appeals made, only about one in ten re- 
sult in any change being effected. Since owners of grain 
do not usually ask for reinspection of samples which are 
very low in their grades and which might on reinspection 
be put down a grade, the reinspections that are called for, 
if they result in a change at all, usually, but not always, 
result in a rise of grade and not a fall. 

XX. Weighing Wheat 

It is just as important for a shipper of wheat to obtain 
accurate weights as it is to obtain accurate grades, for 
weighing, equally with grading, affects the total amount 
of money he will receive for his grain. 

Weighing of grain may seem to be a very simple me- 
chanical process; but, for various reasons, it is difficult 
to carry out with uniform success in western Canada. In 
the first place, grain is received into upwards of 3,000 
country elevators, and it is weighed at every elevator; in 
the second place, the men who weigh the grain at the ele- 
vators are employees of the elevator companies and not of 
the State ; and, in the third place, at the terminal elevators 
the grain is weighed after it goes into the elevator and not 
before. 

In the terminal elevators, the work of the elevator 
weighman is supervised by a Government employee; but. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 99 

on account of the number of weighmen who would be re- 
quired, such constant supervision could scarcely be pro- 
vided at the country elevators. As we have seen, if a 
shipper is not satisfied with the grade of his wheat, he 
can call for reinspection and appeal. Dissatisfaction with 
weights, however, cannot be so easily remedied. In most 
cases, wheat, after being weighed, is binned with other 
grain and cannot again be obtained as an entity for re- 
weighing. It is only possible to re-weigh satisfactorily 
when there has been no leakage between the scale and the 
receiving pit or between the receiving pit and the scale, 
and when the wheat concerned has been stored separately. . 

The scales in the country elevators are inspected and 
approved by inspectors of the Inland Revenue Depart- 
ment ; but there are so many elevators that it has not been 
possible to visit each scale and thoroughly inspect it more 
than about once a year. In addition to the fact that the 
scales are apt to get out of order, other difficulties con- 
nected with weighing are to be found in car damage and 
leakage, pilfering, and occasional dishonesty of one of 
the weighmen. Since a government official cannot be pres- 
ent to watch all the weighing that goes on in country ele- 
vators, and with a view to protecting the shipper, the 
Canada Grain Act provides that " persons interested in 
the weighing of grain shall have free access to the scales 
while such grain is being weighed." A farmer, there- 
fore, if he chooses, can always supervise the weighing of 
his grain. Falsifying or misstating weights is heavily 
penalized ; and, if a farmer is dissatisfied with the scale at 
a country elevator, he can apply for an inspector who will 
at once visit the scale and investigate its condition. 

Some farmers have set up on their farms private scales 
of their own and weigh each wagon load of grain before 
hauling it to the country elevator. By this means they 



100 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

know what their grain should weigh on the scale of the 
country elevator and thus have a check upon the work of 
weighing performed by the elevator operator. 

There is a Chief Weighmaster who has charge of all 
the weighing in Canada. His authority is exercised under 
the Board of Grain Commissioners. At the terminal 
elevators he is also the scale inspector and is thus re- 
sponsible at the lake front not merely for weighing but for 
the condition of the scales. 

A car of grain which has been shipped from a country 
elevator or a loading platform, is inspected for grade at 
Winnipeg but is not weighed officially until it arrives at 
Fort William or Port Arthur. When a car has been 
brought into place or spotted at the siding of a terminal 
elevator, it is at once examined for defects or leakages 
and, if such are found, a record is made of the car num- 
ber and the condition. The seals on the doors are also 
observed and a record is made of their numbers and 
whether or not they are intact. The outer doors of the 
car are then drawn aside, the depth of the grain in the 
car is measured, and the load line noted. One or both 
of the grain doors are then removed, and the grain is un- 
loaded into the grain pit. From this pit it is elevated 
to the hopper above the scale in the working house, and 
it is then weighed by the elevator company's weighman 
under the supervision of the Government weighman. A 
draft ticket which shows the amount which has been 
weighed, is then punched by the scale register. A record 
of the weight is taken, and upon this the certificate of 
weight is issued. ^^ 

XXI. Warehouse Receipts, Registration, and StochtaTcing 
When grain has been received into a terminal elevator 

35 Tide R. Magill, loc. cit., pp. 46-47. 



WHEAT IN WESTEEN CANADA 101 

at the lake front, weighed, and binned, a warehouse receipt 
for it is issued to the person who delivered the grain. 
Upon this receipt is set down the place, the date, the ship- 
ping point, the name of the owner, the kind and grade of 
the grain, the net weight, and the car number. 

The warehouse receipt is first sent to the registration 
ofiice of the Board of Grain Commissioners at Fort Wil- 
liam where it is compared with the inspector's report of 
the cars unloaded at the elevator in question. If found 
correct it is registered. 

On receipt of the bill of lading, the warehouse receipt 
is given to the ovnier of the grain. When a shipper has 
obtained such a receipt: he may sell his grain, if not al- 
ready sold, for cash; or make delivery of his grain, if 
sold, by handing over the receipt for a cheque; or use 
the receipt as collateral security for a loan from his bank. 

When grain is passed out of a terminal elevator into 
a lake steamer or box-car, the warehouse receipt repre- 
senting it must be presented to the registration ofiice for 
cancellation within seventy-two hours after loading of 
the grain has been accomplished. 

The registration records of the registration ofiice show 
the total quantities of the various grains by grades re- 
ceived into and shipped out of each elevator. The in- 
spection and weighing departments also possess such rec- 
ords, so that the operations of each elevator are well 
watched. 

The Government, in carrying out its work of supervis- 
ing the grain business, annually takes stock of all grain in 
each terminal elevator. In the month of August, officers 
of the Board of Grain Commissioners go into each ele- 
vator and make out statements showing the kinds, grades, 
and weights of the grain in each house. The registration 
clerks add up the receipts issued and canceled during 



102 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the year ; and thus, for every elevator, the annual surplus 
or shortage of grain is determined. The information so 
obtained is then published for the information of every 
one interested. 

The Government in response to the demand of the grain 
growers for increased governmental control of the market- 
ing of grain, erected in 1912-14 at Port Arthur an ele- 
vator with a capacity of 3,500,000 bushels, and subse- 
quently built other large terminal elevators at Vancouver, 
Moosejaw, Saskatoon and Calgary. Thus the Govern- 
ment procured, at first-hand, knowledge of the cost of 
elevator construction and operation. Farmers now have 
a wide choice of terminal elevators at the lake front. 
They may ship to an elevator operated by the Government 
as a public utility, to one of three elevators operated by 
their own tradibg companies, to an elevator owned by 
either the Canadian Pacific Eailway, the Canadian ^N'orth- 
ern Eailway or the Grand Trunk Pacific Eailway, or, 
finally, to one of the elevators operated by a commercial 
company.^^ 

XXII. TJie Dominion Grain Research Laboratory 

The Board of Grain Commissioners was established to 
administer the Canada Grain Act of 1912. In the course 
of its work, it was continually encountering problems re- 
lating to grain which demanded solution by patient study 
and research, and its first chairman. Dr. Eobert Magill, 
therefore advocated the establishment of a Grain Eesearch 
Laboratory. As a result, the Laboratory came into exist- 
ence at Winnipeg in the year 1914. 

The Grain Eesearch Laboratory is under the direction 
of Dr. E. J. Birchard, who is ably assisted by Mr. A. W. 

86 Gf. R. Magill, loc. cit., p. 54. 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 103 

Alcock and other investigators. It is equipped with an 
experimental mill, a fermenting cupboard, an electric bak- 
ing oven, moisture testers of various designs, and much 
other apparatus. The chief aims of the laboratory are, 
firstly, to study problems v^hich relate to the keeping 
qualities of grain v^hen it is under transportation or in 
storage, and, secondly, to gather information which may 
be used as a basis for placing the grading of grain on a 
more scientific basis than has hitherto been possible. 

It is often asked: What is the normal amount of 
moisture in grain? Does frosted wheat and immature 
wheat heat more readily than normal wheat of the same 
moisture content ? How much moisture can the different 
grades of grain safely carry without heating in cars or 
boats or when stored in elevators ? To these questions 
which are vitally important to the grain trade, some an- 
swer must be given every day. However, the problems 
suggested by them can only be solved by long-continued 
observations and careful scientific work such as is being 
carried out in the Grain Eesearch Laboratory. 

One of the experiments already made by Dr. Birchard 
and Mr. Alcock was the trial shipment of wheat in bulk 
from Vancouver to London via the Panama Canal ; and, as 
we have seen, it was crowned with success. 

Difiiculties concerning the proper grading of grain are 
constantly coming to the fore. Thus, in the autumn of 
the great rust year, 1916, the comparative milling value 
of rusted grain and the baking qualities of the flour pro- 
duced were matters of the greatest moment. This prob- 
lem was immediately studied in the Grain Eesearch 
Laboratory and the milling yields of the different grades 
at once published. An exhibition of loaves baked from 
the flour of rusted and non-rusted grain respectively was 



104 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

made on the floor of the Grain Exchange, so that all who 
were interested could form their own opinion as to the 
value of the different grades for milling purposes. 

Other questions in which the laboratory has become in- 
terested and which affect grading are these : What is the 
milling value of tough wheat and damp wheat as com- 
pared with straight-grade wheat ? ^^ What are the most 
suitable temperatures for the drying of tough wheat and 
damp wheat ? What value should be given in grading to 
spring-threshed wheat and to admixtures of grains show- 
ing special characteristics such as immature green grains, 
pink grains, black-pointed grains, and frosted grains ? 
According to the Grain Act, wheat grading as ^o. 1 
E'orthern, after being dried, cannot receive a higher grade 
than 'No. 3 Northern : is this justifiable ? How does the 
grading of flax seed correspond with the amount and qual- 
ity of the oil extracted from each grade ? 

The Western Grain Standards Board, which is ap- 
pointed by the Board of Grain Commissioners, sets the 
commercial grades ^^ of wheat each autumn from the first 
samples of the new crop brought to Winnipeg. Average 
samples are sent as soon as possible to Dr. Birchard who 
puts them through the usual milling and baking tests. 
He then submits a report to the Grain Standards Board 
for its guidance in setting the commercial grades. The 
results of the tests are published yearly at Ottawa in the 
Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Statistics and also in 
trade journals. 

37 Tough wheat is wheat which carries a large percentage of 
moisture. If the moisture is excessive, the wheat is known as damp 
wheat. In straight-grade wheat, the amount of moisture is normal. 

38 The statutory grades of western spring wheat are : No. 1 Hard, 
No. 1 Northern, No. 2 Northern, and No. 3 Northern. The Stand- 
ards Board defines sucli additional grades as No. 4 Wheat, No. 5 
Wheat, and No. 6 Wheat, each having subdivisions. Vide supra. 
Section XVI. 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 105 

XXIII. The Winnipeg Grain Exchange 

One of the most important factors in facilitating the 
marketing of the wheat of the Canadian West is the 
Winnipeg Grain Exchange. This great institution was 
incorporated in 1891, and subsequently, in 1908, was 
re-organized as a voluntary association of grain dealers. 
At first there were only ten members, and the entrance 
fee was $15 ; but now the members number more than 
three hundred, and the value of the seats has increased 
to $5,000. So commanding a position has the Exchange 
now attained that the leading grain dealers on the con- 
tinent feel it imperative to become members. The pres- 
ent Grain Exchange building is a fine and massive struc- 
ture which cost $2,000,000; and employed within its 
walls are more than fifteen hundred persons. ^^ The Ex- 
change compiles, records, and publishes statistics; obtains 
and distributes information respecting the produce and 
provision trades; promotes and maintains uniformity in 
the business, customs, and regulations in these trades 
among those engaged in them; and adjusts controversies 
and misunderstandings arising between the traders.*^ 
The Exchange spends thousands of dollars every year in 
its telegraphic communications with the consuming 
markets of the world, and every day posts on blackboards 
the prices prevailing at London, Liverpool, Paris, Buenos 
Ayres, Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Duluth. 
Other statistical information is also being constantly re- 
ceived and given to the press. The prices prevailing on 
the Winnipeg market are telegraphed daily to at least four 
thousand points in the western provinces. All this in- 
formation is given to the farmers without charge, so that 

39 W. E. Milner, The President's Address, Eighth Annual Eeport 
of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, Sept. 13, 1916, p. 29. 

40 These functions are mentioned in the articles of incorporation. 



106 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

nearly all of the agricultural population are supplied with 
figures which enable sellers to dispose of their grain under 
conditions which they consider to be most advantageous 
to themselves. ^^ In 1915-16 the Exchange was the larg- 
est of all the cash wheat markets on the American con- 
tinent.^2 j^ ^j^^^ ^^^^ nearly $500,000,000 were dis- 
tributed throughout the Prairie Provinces, and nearly all 
of this business was by verbal or telegraphic communica- 
tion. So high, however, were the business ethics of the 
Exchange, that there was not an agriculturist who did 
not receive full money for his grain.^^ Through the 
efforts of the Exchange, permanent standards have been 
secured for the various grades of grain, and these have 
proved of great benefit to producers and grain dealers 
alike throughout the West. 

The Grain Exchange provides a most convenient meet- 
ing place for buyers and sellers. The sellers who act 
either directly or indirectly for the producers, are the 
elevator companies, farmers' trading companies, and com- 
mission men; while the buyers who represent the con- 
sumers, are the Canadian millers and exporters. The ex- 
porters sell to English or European mills either directly or 
through other grain exchanges. 

The price of wheat is like the mercury in a barometer 
in that it is constantly fluctuating from hour to hour, from 
day to day, and from week to week. In neither case can 
even the wisest of men predict the changes in detail. The 
mercury in the barometer rises or falls in delicate response 
to the slightest alterations in the pressure of the atmo- 
sphere. The price of wheat on the Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change is equally sensitive to pressure of another kind: 
it goes up and down in sympathy with the ever-changing 

41 W. E. Milner, loo. cit., p. 27. 

42 Ibid., p. 26. 

43 lUd. 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 107 

relation between the world's demand for and supply of 
the leading cereal, and it is also affected by variations 
in the facilities for transportation and in the conditions 
of the money market. All the fluctuations in price which 
result, operate to make fair values for every one con- 
cerned. The Exchange performs its part in influencing 
these fluctuations by giving to its buyers and sellers as 
much up-to-date information concerning world conditions 
affecting the grain trade as possible, and by posting up as 
the fair value at the moment the prices at which sales 
have just been made.^* 

The charge for selling wheat on the Winnipeg Grain 
Exchange is fixed by what is known as the Commission 
Rule. According to this rule, the rate for selling con- 
signed wheat is one cent a bushel. The rate is uniform 
for every customer, and members of the Exchange are not 
permitted either to lower it or raise it. The commission 
rule has various advantages : it allows a seller to estimate 
beforehand what his selling charge will be, it prevents dis- 
crimination between customers, it compels keen competi- 
tion in service, and it provides a fair reward for services 
rendered, thus reducing the temptation to dishonesty.*^ 

Applications for membership on the Exchange are care- 
fully scrutinized in order to prevent the entry of un- 
scrupulous traders, for it is most important that the repu- 
tation of the Exchange for integrity in the dealings of its 
members should be kept as high as possible. If a mem- 
ber violates any of the rules or regulations, his conduct is 
inquired into and he may be disciplined even to the extent 
of expulsion. 

44 Cf. C. F. Piper, Principles of the Grain Trade in Western Can- 
ada, Winnipeg, 1917, pp. 177-178. 

45 Hid., p. 180. 



108 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

XXIV. The Geographical Position of the Grain Exchange 

Owing to the peculiar geographical features of western 
Canada, the main lines of the railways in this vast ter- 
ritory have been built so that they converge toward Win- 
nipeg and lead to Fort William and Port Arthur on the 
lake front. These ports are the natural points for the 
delivery of grain to be sold in bulk for export or for 
transportation to the eastern part of the Dominion. How- 
ever, the Grain Exchange, where this wheat is bought 
and sold, is not located at Fort William or Port Arthur, 
where the wheat is stored, but at Winnipeg, a city situated 
420 miles west of the lake front and therefore far from 
what would seem to be the natural market. Nowhere else 
in the world does a parallel case exist: in other coun- 
tries the grain exchanges are all to be found where the 
wheat in which they deal is delivered. The separation 
of the Grain Exchange of western Canada from its ap- 
parently natural market is unique, and it is therefore of 
interest to inquire as to its cause. 

Eort William and Port Arthur are far away from the 
prairie land which produces the grain. For 400 miles 
immediately west of these twin cities the country is rocky 
and unproductive. On the other hand, Winnipeg is a 
large metropolis and a great railway and banking center, 
and it is situated between the grain fields and the lake 
front. It is therefore much more convenient to operate 
the grain trade from Winnipeg than from Fort William 
or Port Arthur. Exchanges of letters can be made much 
more quickly, and telegrams sent more cheaply, between 
country points and Winnipeg than between those same 
points and the lake front. Moreover, Winnipeg is the 
center of a set of long-distance telephones which radiate 
in all directions and thus enable many farmers and their 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 109 

agents to conununicate with members of the Grain Ex- 
change directly ; but were the Exchange at the lake front, 
such communication, owing to distance, would be very 
much more restricted. The buyers are relatively few, 
while the farmers or producers are relatively numerous. 
It is, as Piper *^ says, ^^ easier to bring the concentrated 
portion of the business from Eort William and Port 
Arthur to Winnipeg than it is to take the divergent and 
extended portion of the business from the grain fields 
in the west to Eort William.'' The buyers can operate 
with relatively slight inconvenience to themselves at a dis- 
tance from the terminal elevators, whereas, if the farmers 
and those who represent them were obliged to travel an ex- 
tra 420 miles to the lake front when they wished to visit 
the Exchange, they would be put to a very considerable 
extra expense and loss of time. It is therefore not sur- 
prising, all this being considered, that the most impor- 
tant and largest Grain Exchange of the West is situated at 
Winnipeg and not at Fort William or Port Arthur. 

XXV. The Grain Exchange Clearing House 

For various reasons it is often necessary for grain 
dealers to deal in what are known as futures, i. e., to buy 
or sell grain which is to be delivered to the purchaser 
during some future month. Thus, in August, a miller 
might buy September wheat, i. e., wheat that must be 
delivered to him in September, or October, November 
or December wheat, i. e., wheat that must be delivered to 
him in the months of October, I^ovember, or December re- 
spectively; and in the winter he might buy May wheat, 
i. e., wheat that must be delivered to him in May, and so 

46 C. B. Piper, Principles of the Grain Trade of Western Canada, 
p. 171. 



illO ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

forth. Of course, pure speculators may and often do 
speculate in wheat as in other things in the hope of an- 
ticipating the movements of the market and thereby mak- 
ing money; but, apart altogether from such speculations, 
dealing in futures is, under normal conditions, an ab- 
solute necessity for the grain trade. Millers, for in- 
stance, in order to regulate the output of their mills, must 
anticipate their needs for wheat to grind into flour often 
months before they are ready to have the grain delivered 
to them, and accordingly must deal in futures. Some- 
times it is necessary first to buy wheat and then sell it 
again. Thus if in August a miller has bought, let us 
say, more October wheat than he finds he can actually 
store when October is approaching, he may be obliged to 
hedge, i. e., sell his October wheat and buy wheat to be 
delivered during a later month such as ISTovember or De- 
cember.^'' Dealing in futures is not merely advantageous 
to the domestic miller but plays an essential role in the 
business of exporting wheat to foreign countries from the 
terminal elevators. 

Within the Grain Exchange is an independent corpora- 
tion known as the Winnipeg Grain Exchange Cleanng 

47 The term hedge really means to protect and is applied to all 
kinds of transactions made to prevent loss due to fluctuations of the 
market. For the sake of illustration, let us suppose that an ele- 
vator owner has sent a number of agents into the country who have 
purchased wheat from various farmers, and let us further suppose 
that the wheat so purchased is not due to arrive at Fort William 
until several months have elapsed. In the interval the market may 
fluctuate seriously. To avoid possible loss, the owner of the wheat 
may hedge, i. e., sell the grain which he has purchased for delivery 
in a future month. When he has done this, he knows exactly what 
his obligations are in respect to the wheat he purchased but has now 
sold, and whether he has made a loss or profit from it. In any case, 
as the fluctuations of the market under normal conditions are small, 
his loss or profit can only be relatively small also; but the intention 
in hedging is to avoid undue risks. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA HI 

House. This corporation perforins most important func- 
tions, for it greatly simplifies and facilitates trading opera- 
tions between the members of the Exchange and, at the 
same time, provides absolute security in all transactions 
concerned with the future delivery of wheat or other 
grains. The principle of the Clearing House is that for 
every contract which the Clearing House accepts, the 
Clearing House becomes seller to the buyer and buyer 
to the seller. In carrying out this principle, the Clearing 
House with all its resources comes to stand solidly behind 
every accepted contract. The result of this is that a per- 
son who buys or sells grain for future delivery can rest 
assured that, so long as he is willing to fulfill his part 
of the contract and provide the necessary security against 
the fluctuations of the market from day to day, if he is 
a buyer, on the contract date the grain will be ready for 
him to receive, and, if he is a seller, on the contract date 
a buyer will be ready to take delivery of his grain and 
pay him for it. 

Some of the features of a single transaction may first 
be considered. Let us suppose that a grain broker buys 
for a customer 5,000 bushels of May wheat and that the 
price of May wheat at the time he wishes to make the 
purchase is about $1.54 per bushel. He assembles with 
other brokers in the wheat pit on the floor of the Ex- 
change. A seller may say " I'll sell May wheat at fifty- 
three and a half ! " By this he means that he offers 
for sale 5,000 bushels of wheat to be delivered in May 
at the price of one dollar, fifty-three and one-half cents 
per bushel, the unit amount of wheat offered being always 
understood as 5,000 bushels unless some other amount 
is specified.^^ If the purchaser says " Sold ! '' the sale is 

48 The standard contract grade of wheat on the Winnipeg Grain 
Exchange is No. 1 Northern, but No. 2 Northern and No. 3 Northern 



112 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

considered made. The buyer enters up the transaction on 
a card at once and the seller does likewise. Then, in their 
offices, they each make up a clearing sheet. At the end 
of the working day, each sends his sheet to the Clearing 
House where it must be deposited by a specified time 
early in the afternoon. As soon as the Clearing House has 
accepted the transaction as recorded on the clearing sheets, 
the particular buyer and seller part company so far as their 
transaction is concerned, and have nothing more to do 
with one another. The seller has contracted to deliver 
6,000 bushels of May wheat, i. e., to deliver this amount 
of wheat some time in May, on any working day. He 
waits until the month of May arrives, and then when he 
is ready, his 5,000 bushels of wheat being now stored in 
a terminal elevator at Fort William or Port Arthur, he 
goes to the Clearing House and tells the Manager that he 
has his wheat ready for delivery. The Manager then 
looks through his books and finds some one who bought 
5,000 bushels of May wheat and whose turn it is to take 
delivery, the turns being arranged in the order of buy- 
ing. He then informs this buyer that such and such a 
seller, our original seller, wishes to deliver 5,000 bushels 
of May wheat to him and he informs the seller who it 
is to whom his wheat is to be delivered. Then it is the 
duty of the seller to deliver his wheat to the buyer with 
whom the Clearing House has brought him into contact, 
at once. The Clearing House has then finished its deal- 
ings with the buying and selling contracts here involved, 
but the seller and buyer only end their business when the 
seller delivers an invoice with the warehouse receipts for 
the wheat and the buyer hands the seller a marked check 
for the amount due. The receipts show that the wheat 

are deliverable thereon at arbitrary discounts of three cents and 
eight cents respectively. This is a fair rule to protect sellers. Vide 
C. F. Piper, loc. cit., p. 150. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 113 

of which the buyer now gets possession, is in storage in an 
elevator at Fort William or Port Arthur on the water 
front of Lake Superior. We thus see that the 5,000 
bushels of wheat that were originally bought in the trans- 
action in the wheat pit have gone not to the original buyer 
but to some one else. Having now disposed of the original 
seller in the transaction in the wheat pit, let us turn our 
attention to the original buyer. How does he obtain the 
6,000 bushels of wheat which he purchased ? The original 
buyer waits imtil May until his turn to receive May wheat 
arrives. The Manager of the Clearing House then in- 
forms him that a certain seller has 5,000 bushels of May 
wheat to deliver and that he is to accept this wheat from 
this particular seller, and he also informs the seller that 
he is to deliver his wheat to our original buyer. It is 
then the duty of the original buyer to accept the 5,000 
bushels of wheat from the seller with whom the Clearing 
House has brought him into contact ; and this second pair 
of buyers and sellers, like the first pair, completes the 
transaction with a marked check and a warehouse receipt 
for the grain. The wheat delivered is always of just the 
same grade and quality as that originally purchased, so 
that in the end nothing it lost by the substitution of one 
seller for another at the time the delivery of the wheat is 
made. 

The Clearing House system, as it affects traders, in 
simplifying their transactions in respect to future deliv- 
eries of wheat, and in guaranteeing security for the ful- 
fillment of such transactions, may be thus described. 
Every member of the Clearing House is bound at the end 
of each working day to send in a sheet showing picfrchases 
made, the names of the vendors, and the prices. He must 
also send in another sheet showing the sales he has made, 
the names of the purchasers, and the prices. The amounts 



114 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

of each sheet are totaled and entered in a recapitulation 
sheets and upon this sheet is then set out a balance of ex- 
cess of purchase over sale or vice versa. The difference 
between the price on the sheet and the closing market price 
is then worked out and this difference is paid within one 
hour by the Clearing House to the member or vice versa 
as the case may be. And thus, on the next day, the pur- 
chase or sales sheet of the member will bring a balance 
forward. Upon these new sheets the day's transactions 
will be set, the sheets will be forwarded to the Clearing 
House at the close of trading, and the transactions settled 
as before. Thus from day to day, after a contract has been 
entered into, if the market drops, a purchaser will be re- 
quired to pay the difference to the Clearing House, or, if 
the market rises, he will receive the difference each day 
from the Clearing House. This daily payment of differ- 
ences is continuously made until the contract month ar- 
rives. If now the member wishes to take delivery of his 
grain, he notifies the Clearing House which causes a ware- 
house receipt for the grain he has bought to be handed over 
to him from an indicated seller and he pays for the same 
to the seller at the current market price. If this current 
market price is higher than the price he contracted to pur- 
chase at, he is not a loser, because, during the time the con- 
tract was open, he has received from day to day the differ- 
ence between the price at which he bought and the market 
price of the day. If, on the other hand, the current price 
is lower than the price he has contracted to purchase at, 
he is not a gainer, because, during the time the contract 
was open, he has paid to the Clearing House the difference 
between the price at which he bought and the market price 
of the day. Similarly, a seller, at the final settling, when 
he gives up his warehouse receipt to the purchaser, may 
receive a lesser or greater price for his wheat than that he 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 115 

contracted for ; and yet he is neither a loser in the one case 
nor a gainer in the other, for the differences involved have 
been already settled with the Clearing House during the 
time the contract v^as open. 

The Clearing House system permits of the same wheat 
being bought and sold a number of times within a season 
and a single warehouse receipt, say for 5,000 bushels of 
wheat, may have an adventurous career in passing through 
a long series of brokers' offices. In a single year, indeed, 
the amount of wheat bought and sold on the Exchange may 
be several times the amount of the entire available crop."*^ 
Yet, in the end, the final purchasers all obtain the wheat 
they have contracted to buy, at the proper moment and 
without fail. The system of the Clearing House, owing to 
the security which it affords, allows of transactions being 
made closer to the margin of necessary profit than would 
otherwise be possible, with the result that farmers obtain a 
higher price for their grain than they could if no such 
system were in operation. 

The Clearing House makes it its business to know the 

financial standing of its members and any failure of a 

member to live up to his contracts is visited with instant 

punishment. If a member should appear to be plunging 

49 From this no inference can be drawn that the transactions in 
futures are necessarily unduly speculative or gambling in their na- 
ture. Thus a miller who has bought more October wheat in April 
than he finds in August he is likely to be able to grind in view of 
orders received since the date of purchase, may sell in August the 
excess for delivery in October to some one else. In September, how- 
ever, he may find that, after all, owing to the receipt in that month 
of unexpectedly large orders for flour, he may require, in order to 
meet these orders, even more October wheat than he has sold. He 
therefore once more goes into the market and again purchases Oc- 
tober wheat. Thus a part of the original purchase of October wheat 
in April and of his sale of the same in August simply become book 
entries which go to swell the entries in the Clearing House records 
and to increase the total volume of buying and selling but which do 
not affect the amount of the actual grain involved. 



116 ESSAYS ON WiSEEAT 

into transactions beyond his financial depth, he may be 
called upon to deposit immediately with the Clearing 
House a check suflSciently large to protect the Clearing 
House against the fluctuations of the market; and, if he 
fails to do this, the Clearing House may close out all his 
transactions. In the event of failure to carry out a con- 
tract, his seat may be sold and he may be excluded from 
the privileges of the Exchange. The Clearing House finds 
it all the more necessary to make stringent rules and regu- 
lations regarding the conduct of its members since any 
failure of a member to carry out a contract must be made 
good by the Clearing House itself. 

XXVI. The Wheat Pit 

One of the most interesting sights in Winnipeg, under 
normal trading conditions, is the wheat pit in the Grain 
Exchange. The pit is in direct telegraphic communica- 
tion with all the leading markets of the world, and the 
changes of prices at Chicago, Minneapolis, Liverpool, etc., 
are kept posted up on raised blackboards. Overhead 
sounders which tick out messages in the Morse Code, keep 
the men at the blackboards constantly in touch with the 
trading in Winnipeg and other centers ; and, during trad- 
ing hours, the blackboard men scarcely have a moment's 
rest. When I visited the Exchange in November, 1916, 
trading was very active and the excitement was great, for 
wheat was selling at a higher price than any that had been 
known since the American Civil War. December wheat 
was selling at $1.94 and November wheat at $1.99. Some 
eighty or a hundred traders were in the pit which, from the 
gallery where I was ensconced, seemed like pandemonium 
let loose. All seemed confusion. The hubbub was con- 
tinuous. A number of the traders were shouting at the 
top of their voices, flinging up their hands, gesticulating 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA HT 

with their fingers, springing up and down, seizing one an- 
other by the shoulders, making notes of sales, and sending 
off telegrams ; but, for a long time, not one coherent word 
reached my ears and I could never tell whether a man was 
selling flax, oats, barley, or wheat. The members of the 
Exchange were evidently communicating with one another 
in an unknown language. Telegraph boys were rushing 
from the traders in the pit to the adjacent telegraph office 
which stretches from one end of the trading room to the 
other. Here the ticking never ceased for an instant, and 
more than twenty clerks behind a long counter were busily 
employed dispatching messages. The boy in charge of the 
numerous telephone stations summoned traders who had 
been called, by crying their names through a speaking 
trumpet, for that was the only means of making a summons 
heard above the din of the wheat-pit. I particularly no- 
ticed one man who appeared desperately anxious to buy 
May oats, for he jumped up and down as fast as he could 
more than twenty times in succession, and yelled again and 
again at the top of his voice : '^ Sell May oats ! Sell May 
oats ! Sell May oats ! " Whether or not he obtained what 
he wanted, I am not sure, for after the most prodigal ex- 
penditure of physical energy he subsided, possibly from 
exhaustion, and I lost sight of him in the crowd. High 
above the long stretch of blackboards at one end of the 
trading room where the blackboard men were continuously 
rubbing out old figures and chalking in new ones, was a 
large dial, something like the face of a clock. Upon it, 
in letters made red with electric light, stood out the syllable 
Dec. which stands for December wheat, i. e., wheat that 
must be delivered in December. And above this was the 
figure 3 which, by reference to the blackboard, could be 
understood as standing for the 3 in the price of $1.93. 
Then around the edge of the dial was the price of Decem- 



118 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

ber wheat in eighths of one cent. If the price was $1.93 
and Ys, the % was lighted up with red, if $1.93 and %, 
then the % was lighted up, and so forth, so that one could 
read off the price at which December wheat had just been 
sold. The wheat-clock is manipulated by the recorder, a 
grave man who sits at a high desk overlooking the wheat- 
pit, and who, with the help of two assistants, keeps an 
accurate account of what trading is done by the often 
frantic men down below. He it is who interprets the un- 
known language of which I have spoken, who by electric 
switches records the fluctuations in the price of sales on the 
wheat-clock, and who provides the trading statistics for the 
reports of the Exchange. 

XXVII. The Effect of the War on the Grain Trade 

The influence of the war upon the grain trade of Canada 
and the United States has been profound. Indeed, it has 
resulted in nothing less than a revolution in the normal 
methods of marketing grain. This subject has been dealt 
with at some length by the three last Presidents of the 
Winnipeg Grain Exchange in their annual addresses, and 
these addresses have formed the chief source of the writer's 
information for what follows. 

The outstanding feature of the marketing of grain in 
!N^orth America during the years of peace was the develop- 
ment of the grain exchanges. Their organization was due 
to commercial evolution and they were not created by gov- 
ernments. They supplied an economic want. It was the 
grain exchanges that found the way to collect grain at 
country points, assemble it in vast quantities at the ter- 
minal points, and distribute it among the mills of this 
continent and the mills of Europe; and it was the grain 
exchanges that developed the system of insurance against 
fluctuation in prices known as future trading, that made 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 119 

possible the financing of grain by tbe banks without in- 
curring undue risks, and that in time developed the most 
complete machinery for taking the grain from the pro- 
ducer and putting it into the hands of the consumer at the 
lowest possible cost.^^ 

The machinery of the grain trade, created as it was by 
commercial evolution in times of peace, is well adapted to 
peace conditions but is liable to be thrown out of gear by 
such a war as that now happily being brought to a con- 
clusion. The effects of the war on this machinery at first 
were not very marked, but they gradually increased in im- 
portance until, in the end, the whole system of marketing 
grain in ^orth America was revolutionized to a degree 
which in ante-bellum days would have been considered im- 
possible and almost inconceivable. 

Soon after the war broke out, ocean tonnage for carry- 
ing grain became scarcer owing to the demands made on 
shipping for transporting troops and munitions. At the 
same time, there was a stiffening in ocean freight rates 
and marine insurance, and a considerable disturbance in 
the international rates of exchange. Under these condi- 
tions, the exporting of wheat from J^orth America became 
a most difficult matter. 

About the 28th of November, 1915, just before the close 
of navigation on the Great Lakes, the Dominion Govern- 
ment, through its Department of Trade and Commerce, 
coromandeered all the wheat at the head of the lakes. This 
action, the first of its kind in the British Empire, came so 
suddenly, so unexpectedly, and at such a critical time of 
the year that it almost caused a panic among the grain 
traders, and it was found necessary to close the Winnipeg 
Grain Exchange for twenty-four hours. Owing to the 

50 J. C. Gage, Tlie President's Address, Ninth Annual Eeport of 
the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, Sept. 12, 1917, p. 35. 



120 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

interference with contracts that resulted from the Gov- 
ernment's action, losses were caused both to members of 
the Exchange and to farmers; but it was recognized that 
the financial sacrifices involved were being made as the 
result of a war measure which had been taken in good faith 
with a view to assisting the British Empire and the Allies 
in their great struggle for the cause of liberty.^^ 

The rising prices of bread in the United Kingdom, as 
in other European countries, soon forced the British Gov- 
ernment to consider ways and means of protecting the con- 
sumer, and the British Government decided to create an 
agency upon this continent for the purchase of wheat. The 
result was that a company — the Wheat Export Company 
— was named at Winnipeg in 1916 and authorized to pur- 
chase wheat for the United Kingdom. At a later date, this 
Company was entrusted with the buying of all the wheat 
for the Allies in Europe, especially for Great Britain, 
France, and Italy. When this stage was reached, the ex- 
porters of wheat in Canada found themselves deprived for 
the time being of their business, and an important section 
of the grain trade was thus made to feel the full conse- 
quences of the war.^^ 

The Company that purchased for the European Allies 
made use of the machinery of the grain exchanges. It 
bought for future delivery in the ordinary commercial 
way; but, representing as it did the treasuries of Great 
Britain, Erance, and Italy, its operations were upon an 
enormous scale. During the times of peace in which the 
grain exchanges had been developed and had taken care of 
the wheat of the continent of [N'orth America, no company 
had ever appeared which had behind it such immense re- 
sources, which had furnished to it orders for such tre- 

51 W. E. Milner, The President's Address, Eighth Annual Report 
of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, Sept. 13, 1916, p. 25. 
62 J. C. Gage, loc. cit., p. 36. 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 121 

meudous quantities of grain, and which, consequently had 
such a predominating place in the exchange markets. ^^ 

The representatives of the Wheat Export Company were 
buying through the winter and spring months of 1916-17 
for May and July delivery ; and, of course, they were not 
the only buyers, as the Canadian mills were doing the 
same. A situation then arose which, as the month of 
May, 191 Y, approached, brought to a head the accumu- 
lating effects of the war upon the grain business of Can- 
ada. The gatherers of grain at country points had hedged 
their holdings in the usual way. Much of the grain so 
hedged did not come up to the contract grades; and the 
result was that, as the month of May approached, there was 
heavy bidding for the contract grades, and prices went 
skyrocketing. On Saturday, April 28, 1917, May wheat 
opened on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange at $2.71. 
Within two minutes, and at the first trade, the price was 
$2.82 ; and in 23 minutes, and at the fifteenth trade, it was 
$2.86.^* The maximum closing price for May wheat, 
namely, $3 per bushel, was attained on each of the two 
days. May 11 and May 12.^^ Had the holders of May 
and July wheat stood out for their pound of flesh, they 
would have brought about a disaster to the Canadian grain 
trade and, as it appeared later, to the grain trade of the 
whole N^orth American continent, unparalleled in com- 
mercial history. To avoid this, the Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change took hold of the situation and the result was the 
next profound effect of the war upon the grain trade. ^^ 

The rising prices of wheat, accompanied as they were by 
parallel increases in the cost of flour, produced a clamor 
amongst the consumers of the country, and, as usual, this 

53 lUd. 

54 Ninth Annual Keport of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, p. 66. 

55 lUd., p. 120. 

56 J. C. Gage, loc. cit., p. 37. 



122 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

clamor was very largely directed against what is popularly 
called speculating or gambling in the bread of the people. 
The Winnipeg Grain Exchange, on April 28, 1917, there- 
fore appointed a Censoring Committee whose duty it was 
to ascertain accurately the extent and character, if any, 
of illegitimate speculating in wheat. Very little of such 
business was found by the Committee. The appointment 
of the Committee created considerable surprise and re- 
sulted in a fall of prices ; but this fall was only temporary 
and soon prices began to mount skyward again. 

Shortly after hearing the Keport of the Censoring Com- 
mittee on May 3, 1917, the Winnipeg Grain Exchange 
decided upon the fateful step that took away the facilities 
for future trading in wheat in the Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, and proceeded to take all the other steps rendered 
necessary thereby. ^"^ The last closing price was taken as 
a basis of closing trades in the Clearing House ; and, after 
a great deal of trouble, the May and July accounts were 
all cleared as satisfactorily as it was possible to clear them 
to the various interests involved. IsTegotiations took place 
with the longs and the shorts, with the scalpers and the 
spreaders, and with the agencies that were gathering the 
grain throughout the country. The Wheat Export Com- 
pany met the Exchange in a generous way ; and the agencies 
which were collecting the grain in the country, guaranteed 
to sell 90 per cent, of all the wheat they controlled for the 
balance of the crop year to the Export Company. Many 
members of the Exchange were financially injured, yet all 
the members were dominated by one spirit, the spirit of 
give and take, and of doing the best in the interests of the 
country during the period of the war.^^ 

57 The Ninth Annual Report of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, 
Sept. 12, 1917, The Council's Eeport, pp. 64-73. 

58 Cf. J. C. Gage, loc. cit., pp. 38-39. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 123 

The major causes of the crisis at the Grain Exchange 
which resulted in the withdrawal of the facilities for fu- 
ture trading were war causes, although the intensity of 
the crisis was increased by the fact that much of the hedged 
grain did not come up to the contract grades. These war 
causes, as summarized by Gage,^^ may now be discussed. 

To begin with, there was a loudly proclaimed shortage of 
the supply of available wheat. This shortage was empha- 
sized in the speeches of some of the most prominent men in 
the British Empire and also in the United States. Minis- 
ters of the Imperial Government, high officials in both 
countries, and hundreds of newspaper editors laid stress 
on the fact that the surplus wheat in Russia was locked up 
by the war, that the surpluses in such countries as India 
and Australia were not available through conditions of 
transportation, and that Argentina had no surplus at all. 
They proclaimed the dependence of the European allies, 
so far as wheat is concerned, upon the continent of IN'orth 
America, and they devised ways and means of eliminating 
waste, of husbanding their resources, and of persuading or 
coercing their peoples to use substitutes for the white bread 
to which they had become accustomed. 

"Next, there was the imperious need of the allied peo- 
ples for Canadian wheat at a time when their men in uni- 
form had been withdravni from productive work, thus caus- 
ing a labor shortage in agriculture as in other interests 
on the one hand, and on the other increasing the normal 
consumption of bread. The soldiers at the front must be 
fed and well fed ; the workers in the United Kingdom were 
demanding and receiving higher wages ; the ranks of the 
workers had been increased by thousands and hundreds of 
thousands of women workers, so that the masses of the 

59iUd., pp. 39-40. 



124 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

people in the United Kingdom had more money to spend 
than for some years previously. 

'Next the war had affected profoundly the money situ- 
ation, and, in so far as currency had been inflated or in- 
creased in any of its forms, higher prices were inevitable. 

Lastly, it must be noted that the concentration of the 
buying for the European allies had been only slowly carried 
out and imperfectly at best. For example, in the Winni- 
peg market there were some who bought wheat for the Bel- 
gian Relief Commission; there were others who bought 
wheat for France ; others again who bought wheat for the 
United Kingdom, and these were buying in open compe- 
tition with one another. Further, these agencies were 
buying not only in competition with one another, but also 
in competition with Canadian millers and American mill- 
ers, who themselves were buying wheat to fill flour sales 
to the same Allied Governments. 

It was inevitable that a crisis should develop under such 
conditions as these, and the only wonder is that it was not 
worse. 

The action of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange in taking 
away the facilities for future trading in wheat did not at 
first commend itself to the other grain exchanges of ITorth 
America; indeed, the tendency in the exchanges of the 
United States was to question the wisdom of the steps 
taken in Winnipeg. It soon appeared, however, that the 
whole grain trade of this continent had been swept within 
the area of trouble, and within a very few days the leading 
exchanges of the United States were forced to take steps 
almost identical with those taken at Winnipeg. ^^ 

The price of wheat soared upwards on the grain ex- 
changes of the United States just as it did at Winnipeg. 
At Chicago, the highest price for cash wheat, namely $3.43 

60 lUd., p. 40. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 125 

per bushel,^ ^ was attained on May 12, 1917 ; whilst, on the 
same day, at Minneapolis, the price of One Hard wheat 
ranged from $3.49 to $3.54 per bushel.^^ 

The Winnipeg Exchange was the first in North America 
seriously to investigate the question as to whether or not 
there was any illegitimate gambling going on in wheat in 
war time; it was the first to take steps to prevent prices 
going higher still ; and it was also the first to work out and 
apply the remedy to the situation, the only remedy at its 
disposal. By virtue of its actions during the crisis, the 
Winnipeg Grain Exchange gained in the esteem of the 
general public. Eesponsible men in all lines of business 
gave expression to their opinion that the Exchange had 
acted wisely and well under very difficult circumstances, 
and it dawned upon the public in general that the men en- 
gaged in the grain trade might be just as conscientious and 
just as patriotic as the men engaged in any other lines of 
business in the world. Certainly, the action taken by the 
Exchange contributed largely to the fact that the Govern- 
ment at Ottawa was prepared to give a sympathetic hearing 
to the representatives of the Exchange on the whole matter 
of the marketing of grain during war time.®^ 

The next great effect of the war upon the grain trade 
of ISTorth America was the beginning of government regu- 
lation of the grain business. Every European country 
engaged in the war had found it necessary to undertake 
the regulation of grain supplies, grain distribution, and 
grain prices. Thus the period of state regulation was in- 
augurated in the warring countries of Europe one after 
another, and the mounting prices of bread upon this con- 

61 The Board of Trade of Chicago, Sixtieth Annual Report for the 
year ending Dec. 31, 1917, p. 64. 

62 Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, Thirty-fifth Annual Report 
for the year ending Dec, 1917, p. 71. 

63 J. C. Gage, loc. cit., p. 41. 



126 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

tinent and the action of the grain exchanges compelled the 
governments of the United States and Canada to consider 
what they could do under the circumstances. In the 
United States, a food controller, Mr. Herbert Hoover, was 
appointed and the Food Control Bill tabled, with the result 
that there was created the United States Grain Corporation 
which was put in charge of the most gigantic wheat mo- 
nopoly the world has ever seen. 

The United States Grain Corporation became the only 
buyer of wheat at the great terminal markets and the only 
seller and distributor of wheat from these markets to the 
American mills, the European allies, and the neutral coun- 
tries. In the United States the exporters were first throvni 
out of business. Then it was decided to create the Grain 
Corporation. Then, by a Commission appointed by the 
President, prices were fixed at which the Corporation was 
to buy all the wheat. Then future trading was prohibited. 
And, finally, the mixing of the grades of grain at the great 
terminal markets was made impossible. If there is added 
to this the fact — although this was not due to the war — 
that the United States Government had taken over the 
matter of the inspection of grain, had standardized the 
grade, and had taken the inspection out of the hands of the 
different state legislatures, boards of trade and grain ex- 
changes, it is not difficult to realize that the war has abso- 
lutely revolutionized the whole grain business of the United 
States. In the spring of 1914, no one could have imagined 
that, as the result of a European war, the United States 
Government would purchase all the wheat in the United 
States ; that a government body would fix the prices ; that 
the government would prohibit future trading; and that 
the government would prevent mixing of the grades, which 
was the very foundation of the great sample markets of the 
United States. Yet this is what actually happened.®* 

64 J. C. Gage, loc. cit., pp. 42-43. 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 127 

In Canada a different course was followed. The Gov- 
ernment of Canada took into conference representatives 
of the producers and also of the trade, and especially of the 
Grain Exchange. The Government heard all that the 
most experienced members of the Exchange had to say 
about the marketing of grain, and, as a result of these ne- 
gotiations, the Government of Canada, on June 11, 1917, 
created a body called the Board of Grain Supervisors for 
Canada, and clothed it with certain authority by an Order- 
in-Council under the Defense of the Realm Act. The 
Board, on the one hand, is not a great buying corporation 
like the United States Grain Corporation and, on the other 
hand, it does not usurp the functions proper of the Board 
of Grain Commissioners. It is a regulating body not an 
operating body. Its primary functions are: (1) to regu- 
late the price at which grain shall be bought and sold dur- 
ing the period of its existence, and (2) to regulate the 
distribution of grain so that the grain will go to the Ca- 
nadian people and the Allied powers. It has sometimes 
been said that the Board has power to commandeer all the 
grain in Canada. It has no such power: it cannot go to 
the farm, for example, and commandeer the wheat there, 
and its power to commandeer at elevators is a power to 
enforce the price it has set. If the owner of the grain 
that is in an elevator refuses to sell at the price set, the 
Board has power then to take the grain at that price. ^^ 

The Board of Grain Supervisors at first consisted of 
eleven members but now consists of twelve. Six of these 
twelve members are not members of the Winnipeg Grain 
Exchange. Of these six, one is the President of the Ca- 
nadian Council of Agriculture, one a member of the Board 
of Grain Commissioners, one is the representative of the 
unorganized farmers, two represent labor organizations in 

65 lUd., p. 43. 



128 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

eastern Canada, and the sixth, represents the remaining 
body of eastern consumers. Of the six members of the 
Board who are also members of the Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, one is the General Manager of the Saskatchewan 
Co-operative Elevator Company, one is the President of 
the Wheat Export Company which buys for the Allies, and 
one represents the flour milling interests. 

In accordance with its authority, the Board of Grain 
Supervisors has fixed the price of wheat from time to time. 
On July 20, 1917, the Board by its first Order fixed the 
maximum price of wheat, on the basis of One E'orthern in 
store at Eort William, at $2.40 per bushel, the order be- 
coming effective on August 1, 1917.^^ The Board then 
issued Orders that trading in wheat for future delivery 
should cease in the Grain Exchanges of Canada on Sep- 
tember 1, 1917, and that the price of wheat on that date, 
on the basis of One N'orthern in store at Fort William, 
should not exceed and not be less than $2.40 per bushel.^'^ 

On September 12, 1917, the Board of Grain Super- 
visors fixed the price of wheat to accord with the fixed 
prices in the United States as follows : ^^ 

Fixed Prices of Wheat per Bushel from September 12, 1917, 
Until August 31, 1918, Inclusive 

Canada ^ -^ j a^ u. 

• x^ J. TTTMT A T»^^j- United States 

(basis Fort William and Port /i. • ta i ^v ^ at- t \ 

^ A ^+h ■> (basis Dulutn and Minneapolis) 

1 Manitoba Northern.. $2.21 1 Dark Northern $2.21 

2 Manitoba Northern.. $2.18 2 Dark Northern $2.18 

3 Manitoba Northern.. $2.15 3 Dark Northern $2.15 

1 Alberta Red Winter. . $2.21 1 Dark Hard Winter.. $2.21 

2 Alberta Red Winter. . $2.18 2 Dark Hard Winter. . $2.18 

3 Alberta Red Winter. . $2.15 3 Dark Hard Winter. . $2.15 

66 Memoranda of the Board of Grain Supervisors of Canada, Order 
No. 1, issued at Winnipeg, July 20, 1917. 

67 lUd. Order No. 3 and Order No. 4, both issued August 17, 1917. 
&& Ihid. Order No. 5, issued September 12, 1917. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 129 

The fixed prices of wheat were slightly increased for 
the 1918 crop both in Canada and the United States. In 
Canada the fixed prices for the three first grades for the 
crop year 1918-19 have been fixed as follows: 

1 Manitoba Northern $2,241/2 

2 Manitoba Northern $2,211/2 

3 Manitoba Northern $2,171/2 

In addition to fixing the prices of wheat, the Board of 
Grain Supervisors, in conjunction with Mr. Hoover's de- 
partment, put into effect the regulation of the export of 
wheat between Canada and the United States. 

By an Order-in-Council on September 5, 1918, the Do- 
minion Government took over the control of the marketing 
and handling of grain within the Dominion. The Order- 
in-Council vests authority in the Board of Grain Super- 
visors in regard to grain consumed in Canada and grain 
exported to the Allies. It provides that the agent for the 
Allied Governments must negotiate with the Board in re- 
gard to exported grain, and the Board can specify the place 
at which the Allied Governments shall accept delivery, the 
prices, and the terms. It also increases the power of the 
Board of Grain Supervisors with regard to grain con- 
sumed in Canadian mills, and, in a word, through the 
Board of Grain Supervisors the Government of Canada 
in the Order-in-Council takes control of the whole move- 
ment of grain. ^^ 

Sooner or later it seems certain that the grain trade 
will return to the condition in which it was before the war 
when the prices of wheat were not fixed but fluctuated in 
accordance with demand and supply. 

69 W. K. Bawlf, The President's Address, Tenth Annual Report 
of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, Sept. 11, 1917, p. 43. 



130 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

XXVIII. Financing the Crop Movement 

The grain which a farmer raises in western Canada, rep- 
resents a very large part of his yearly revenue, and it is 
therefore most important that he should be able to sell it 
for cash soon after it has been threshed. Money is the 
universal medium of exchange ; and the farmer requires it 
to pay those who assist him in his work, to buy horses, 
cattle, implements, machinery, etc., to erect farm build- 
ings, and to purchase all the necessities requisite for the 
existence and comfort of himself and his family. "^^ 

The farmer naturally desires to be supplied with money 
as he requires it, and the problem of giving him cash for 
his wheat, whenever he wants it, is a considerable one. 
The ultimate consumer, as represented by the miller, does 
not buy at once all the wheat he can make use of for a 
whole year, because, if he did, he could not store it all 
and could not pay for it all in cash. If the ultimate con- 
sumer were to pay the farmer for his grain, the farmer 
would be badly inconvenienced in his farming operations 
by the necessity of waiting for deferred payments. 
Months would elapse between the delivery of the grain to 
a country elevator or into a box-car and the receipt of the 
money which would be owing to him. It is therefore clear 
that some agency must step in between the farmer and the 
consumer, which will give the farmer cash for his wheat 
as he requires it and carry the grain until the consumer 
uses it and pays for it. This agency, acting indirectly, is 
the bank. 

The amount of credit used to move the grain crop of 

70 C. B. Piper has discussed tlie principles involved in financing 
the crop movement in his Principles of the Grain Trade of West- 
ern Canada (pp. 183-191) and his discussion has been of consider- 
able assistance to the author in writing this Section. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 131 

western Canada eacli year is usually about $100,000,000. 
This vast sum is required for seasonal use only and could 
not therefore be provided profitably by the grain trade. 
It costs from $7,000 to $12,000 to build a country ele- 
vator which will hold 30,000 bushels of wheat. If the 
price of wheat in the country were 75 cents per bushel, it 
would require $22,500 to pay for enough to fill a single 
elevator. Moreover, an elevator usually is filled for a 
part of the year only. If an elevator company were obliged 
to maintain a fund of $22,500 per elevator all the year 
round, so as to fill each elevator for part of a year only, 
this capital would be badly employed and would yield a 
very poor rate of interest : it could be more profitably spent 
in some other business. Similarly, commission merchants 
and track buyers cannot afford to keep capital in large 
sums available for mere seasonal use. It is therefore ob- 
vious that the grain trade is unable to finance the crop 
movement without external aid. 

Credit is the commodity of banks, and the business of 
providing credit for financing the crops therefore naturally 
falls to these institutions. The banks collect small de- 
posits from a large number of people and then lend out the 
money so accumulated to those who require it for carrying 
on trade and comimerce. The depositors receive from the 
banks a certain rate of interest and the borrowers are 
charged by the banks a higher rate of interest. The sum 
gained by the difference in rates of interest serves to pay 
the expenses of the banks and to ensure a profit upon their 
operations. At the same time, the money which the banks 
handle, is made to work both for the depositors and the 
borrowers. When the money is needed to buy the grain 
as it leaves the farms, the banks make temporary loans to 
the elevator companies, the commission merchants, and the 



132 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

track buyers, who pay interest for it. When the money 
is repaid to the banks, the banks use it again elsewhere in 
other seasonal businesses. 

The financial business of forwarding the grain of west- 
em Canada to the miller is split into four sections: (1) 
from the farm to Fort William and Port Arthur, (2) from 
Fort William and Port Arthur to the seaboard or domes- 
tic miller, (3) from the seaboard to the foreign grain ex- 
change, and (4) from the foreign grain exchange to the 
foreign miller. The banks of Canada, through their west- 
ern branches, so far as the crop movement is concerned, 
practically confine themselves to financing the crop from 
the farm to the head of the lakes. 

When the movement of the grain from the farms has 
once begun and the use of credit has become extensive, it 
is very important that the grain should be kept moving 
to the lake front as fast as possible. The quicker the 
grain can be moved to the lake front and sold for cash, the 
shorter is the time during which the money required to 
move the grain is employed, and the sooner is this money 
available for other purposes. It is therefore to the ad- 
vantage of every one connected with the grain trade, both 
grain dealers and transportation companies, to keep the 
grain moving as fast as possible and thus keep credit turn- 
ing over. The principle of finance here involved is called 
velocity of credit.'^^ The faster dollars are turned over, 
the more work do they perform in a given time and the 
greater are their earning powers. Instead of attempting 
to finance the western Canadian crop to the seaboard or to 
foreign grain exchanges, the Western Canadian bankers 
keep their dollars busily engaged in providing for the 
financial requirements of trade and commerce within their 
own territory. 

71 Vide C. B. Piper, loc. cit., pp. 185-18G. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 133 

Occasionally it happens that the banks have not at their 
disposal the whole of the huge sum necessary to finance the 
crop movement from the farms to the head of the lakes. It 
is then necessary for the banks to seek outside help by bor- 
rowing credit from the Government or from some other 
source. If, for any reason, the banks did not make credit 
available in sufficient quantity to those who buy wheat 
from the farmers, the purchasing power of the buyers 
would be naturally restricted, the farmers would tend to 
sacrifice their grain for unduly low prices, and the whole 
machinery of the grain trade would be seriously affected. 
It is thus seen that the normal functioning of the banks 
is of the very highest importance both to the grain growers 
and the grain buyers. 

When an elevator company buys grain in the country, 
it pays cash to the farmer, using money borrowed from 
the bank; and it then immediately re-sells the wheat at a 
slightly higher price on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange as 
a future, i. e., for delivery in some future month at Fort 
William or Port Arthur. This operation is known as 
hedging. The immediate re-selling of the grain as a future 
protects the elevator company against loss by a possible 
fall in the market during the weeks or months that the 
grain is en route to the head of the lakes, enables the 
company to make a definite small profit on each transac- 
tion, and, at the same time, protects the bank from which 
credit has been borrowed. The selling of cash grain as 
futures serves as a means of eliminating speculation from 
the business of the elevator companies; and one of the 
most important and beneficial functions of the Grain 
Exchange is that of providing the machinery by which 
such selling is accomplished. Were this machinery not 
always available, the banks could not afford to lend their 
money for moving the grain as cheaply as they do, and 



134 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the grain growers in consequence would obtain less for 
their wheat. 

XXIX. The Flour Mills of Western Canada 

The flour mills of western Canada, as elsewhere, are 
situated where power is cheap and shipping facilities are 
most favorable. These strategic points are to be found 
at Fort William on Lake Superior, at Keewatin and 
Kenora on the Lake of the Woods, at Winnipeg, and at 
various other localities on the trunk lines of railways. 
The mills at Keewatin and Kenora are driven directly by 
water power, whilst those at Fort William and Winnipeg 
are driven by electric power derived from waterfalls. 
It is interesting to note that the three mills at Medicine 
Hat obtain their power from natural gas which is used 
to drive electric motors. 

In the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, 
and British Columbia, there are 148 flour mills having a 
daily capacity of 36,000 barrels; and, in addition, there 
are nine mills having a daily capacity of 3,200 barrels, 
which produce rolled oats and oatmeal. ''^^ By provinces 
the statistics for the flour mills are as follows: 

Number Capacity 
of in barrels 
mills per day- 
Manitoba 35 15,000 

Saskatchewan 61 9,110 

Aberta 49 10,950 

British Columbia 3 700 

Totals 148 : . . . 35,760 

Fort William, Keewatin, and Kenora are situated in 
the Province of Ontario but to the west of the Great Lakes 

72 As fixed by law, one barrel of flour contains 196 pounds standard 
weight of flour. Two bags make one barrel, and a bag of flour there- 
fore contains 98 pounds. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 135 

and in the Western Grain Inspection Division. The mills 
which thej contain, although belonging to an eastern 
province, are therefore western for all practical purposes. 

A considerable number of the mills of western Canada 
are known as Midget mills. The Midget mill is con- 
structed bj the manufacturer of a standard size. When a 
mill is ordered, the parts are shipped to the buyer and, 
upon arriving at their destination, are rapidly put to- 
gether, so that the mill may be operated at once. On the 
other hand, western Canada also possesses some of the 
largest, the most modern, and the most highly efficient 
mills in the world. Among these may be mentioned the 
plants of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company at 
Keewatin, which consist of two units capable of grinding 
9,000 barrels of flour every day. The Ogilvie Flour Mills 
Company Limited — the pioneer company — has plants 
at Fort William, Winnipeg, and Medicine Hat, which to- 
gether have a capacity of 8,500 barrels daily. This com- 
pany also grinds western wheat at Montreal where its 
mills have a combined capacity of 8,000 barrels per day. 
The Western Canada Flour Mills Company Limited has a 
very large mill at Winnipeg with a daily capacity of 5,500 
barrels ; and, in addition, it has smaller mills at Brandon 
and Calgary. The Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited 
has mills at Kenora, Brandon, and Medicine Hat with a 
combined daily capacity of 5,000 barrels. The Maple 
Leaf Company also grinds western wheat at its great mill 
at Port Colborne on Lake Erie in Ontario, this mill having 
a daily capacity of 9,000 barrels. The milling system of 
all the great roller mills which have here been mentioned, 
is known as American as distinguished from the English 
system. 

Eif ty per cent, of the output of western Canadian flour 
mills is exported to other countries, Great Britain being 



136 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

by far tlie largest customer. The rest of the flour is dis- 
tributed throughout Canada for domestic consumption. 

The total number of flour mills in all Canada is 710 
with a daily capacity of 125,000 barrels of flour, of which 
in the four provinces of western Canada, as we have seen, 
there are 148 mills with a daily capacity of 36,000 bar- 
rels. During the food crisis in the crop year 191Y-18, 
Canada supplied to the Allies in the great war 10,000,000 
barrels of much needed flour in addition to her exports 
of wheat. "^^ 

At the entry to the ofiice of the Lake of the Woods 
Milling Company, at Winnipeg, stands a quern which was 
brought to western Canada from Eussia by the Doukabors 
about twenty years ago. As one looks upon it for the 
first time, one straightway compares it in the mind's eye 
with the great modern roller mill which the Company 
owns at Keewatin. How curious and striking is the con- 
trast ! The quern consists of two stones set one on the 
top of the other in a solid wooden stand. The stand rests 
on four stout legs and its top is thereby raised about two 
and a half feet from the ground; The upper stone which 
is pivoted upon the lower one, is flat above and below, 
and is cylindrical in form. It measures fifteen inches in 
diameter, is about five inches thick, and weighs upwards 
of sixty pounds. In its center is a hole into which hand- 
fuls of wheat used to be put so that the grain might pass 
downwards between the stones. The upper stone was re- 
volved by hand with the aid of a short handle ; and, as a 
trial proved, a considerable amount of physical energy 
must have been expended by the man or woman who 
turned it. The flour produced by the grinding came out 
laterally between the stones and passed down a groove in 

73 For the statistical information given above, I am indebted to the 
'Northwestern Miller. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 137 

the wooden stand into some receptacle provided to collect 
it. The quern is now naught but a relic of the past and 
reminds one of the fossils of extinct animals which add 
so much fascination to the pages of the great book of 
the geological record. Since the hey-day of the quern 
several centuries ago, the milling industry has been sub- 
jected to progressive evolution and, did not history tell 
us of its details, we should find it almost as difficult to 
realize that the modern roller mill has developed from the 
old hand-stone as it is to realize that the swallow and the 
seagull have sprung from a cold and slowly creeping 
reptile. In contrast with the quern, how complex and 
wonderful seems the great Lake of the Woods mill at 
Keewatin, with its mighty elevator for storing wheat, its 
great warehouse filled with bags and barrels for holding 
the mill's end-products, its loading and unloading facili- 
ties, its turbine for tapping the giant strength of the river, 
its power house, its driving belts, its appliances for clean- 
ing and preparing the grain, and above all, in the mill 
proper, its automatic machinery which, ever humming at 
its work, seems to enjoy its task of reducing the grain into 
the finest flour. So continuously, so delicately, so gradu- 
ally, and yet withal so irresistibly is the reduction process 
carried out, and so many are its stages, that one is in- 
voluntarily reminded of the reduction and assimilation of 
food that goes on in the digestive tract of one of the 
higher animals. As one observes the succession of cor- 
rugated chilled-iron rollers for breaking open the wheat 
berry, the gyrating boxes or plansifters for sifting the 
break flour, the dunst, the middlings, and the semolina from 
the broken wheat and bran, the purifiers in which the 
breath of the mill removes the fine branny particles from 
the middlings, the silk bolting cloth of finer and ever finer 
mesh for grading the middlings, the smooth rollers, pair 



138 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

after pair, for criisliing the middlings into flour, the worm 
conveyers, the bran collector, the offal grader, the stock- 
ings for removing the mill dust, and much else ; and, when 
one reflects that the mill works continuously night and 
day, week in and week out, with so little manual labor 
spent upon its guidance, and yet with thousands of barrels 
of flour turned out every day, one cannot help admiring 
the ingenuity of man and rejoicing at such evidence of 
his mastery over the forces of nature. Not small indeed 
is the debt of gratitude which Canada owes to the great 
inventors of the past who have made her present develop- 
ment possible. 

XXX. Recent Improvements in the Conditions of 
Farm Life 

The conditions of farm life on the prairie have been 
steadily improved in the last few years owing to the in- 
troduction of various conveniences. Farming implements, 
such as plows, binders, and threshing machines, have un- 
dergone progressive evolution, so that the actual work 
of tilling the fields, gathering the crops, and threshing 
the grain, has become much more scientific and eificient 
than it was. Light metal-frame wind-mills have been 
erected on many farms as a source of power for pumping 
water but are now being largely replaced by engines burn- 
ing liquid fuel. 

The gasolene or kerosene engine has been a particularly 
welcome addition to the farm and is now much used to 
save both time and manual labor. '^* Smaller engines are 
employed for pumping water, and for operating the milk- 
ing machine (with which several cows may be milked at 
one and the same time), the cream-separator, the churn, 

74 Kerosene, on account of its cheapness and efficiency in producing 
power, is now becoming a popular substitute for gasolene. 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 139 

the washing machine, the grindstone, and the fanning 
mill for cleaning grain intended for seed. Larger engines 
are employed for chopping roots and grinding grain for 
feed, for cutting wood, and for running the threshing ma- 
chine. 

The tractor, which is essentially a gasolene or kerosene 
locomotive, is now beginning to replace the horse in the 
work of plowing and of transporting heavy loads of grain 
to the elevators, etc. It is also used, where it is available, 
instead of the stationary gasolene or kerosene engine, to 
drive the larger threshing machines. 

One of the most recently perfected conveniences is the 
isolated farm lighting plant which has already been in- 
stalled on many large farms. The gasolene or kerosene 
engine and the electric generator may be combined in one 
fixture or be separate so that the engine is movable. The 
electricity produced in the generator is usually conducted 
to storage batteries, and these can be sufficiently charged 
in a few hours to serve the lighting system for a week. 
The current may also be taken directly from the generator 
and be employed either for giving light or, through the 
medium of a motor, for driving the various machines in 
the home. The electric lighting system is used for illum- 
inating not merely the farm house but also the barns, the 
stables, the yards, and even the chicken houses, with a 
consequent falling into disuse of the time-honored but 
troublesome coal-oil lamp and lantern, and a correspond- 
ing diminution in the risk of fire. 

Sanitation has been improved by the proper installa- 
tion of mangers, stalls, and floors in horse and cattle 
stables. Owing to this change, the work of tending live- 
stock has become much more pleasant and healthful than 
it was. Many farms are now equipped with an aseptic 
tank and a running-water system which give conveniences 



140 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

in the lavatory and kitchen of the same nature as those 
commonly enjoyed in a city home. 

Millions of trees supplied from the Dominion Arbore- 
tum at Indian Head and from other centers, have been 
planted on the farms where they act as wind-breaks, pro- 
vide wood-lots for the supply of firewood and small tim- 
ber, give relief to the unbroken sky line, and add a note of 
distinction and attractiveness to the home. Here, too, 
may be mentioned the phonograph. Before its introduc- 
tion, in many an isolated farm house, the sound of musical 
instruments and the voice of song were rarely or never 
heard; but now, with the assistance of the phonograph, 
the spare hours may be pleasantly beguiled with reproduc- 
tions of the best that the musical world can provide. 

The telephone of which there is a web of wires in most 
rural communities, and the motor car which is now ex- 
ceedingly popular with the farmer and his wife, have 
drawn the farms together and have done much to annihilate 
the great spaces of the prairie. In cases of childbirth or 
of sudden illness, it is now much more easy than it was 
to summon and obtain medical assistance. The motor 
car permits of increased social intercourse between the 
families of neighboring farms, and the telephone keeps 
the farmer in touch with the world's markets. One of 
the amenities of life made possible by the introduction 
of the telephone is the playing of interf arm chess matches 
during the long winter evenings. 

It is probable that in the near future wireless telegra- 
phy will be used to connect the pioneers of outlying set- 
tlements, survey parties, and explorers with older com- 
munities, and that the aeroplane will find employment in 
hastening the transportation of rural mails, of postal 
packets, and possibly even of agriculturalists. The car- 
riage of freight by dirigibles or other flying machines 



WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 141 

has not yet been placed on a commercial basis ; but, should 
that happen in the near or distant future, it might well 
have a very important effect not only upon farm life but 
upon the vrhole course of the grain business. 

XXXI. The Agrarian Movement 

For the purpose of advancing their social and economic 
interests, the farmers of the West have organized them- 
selves into associations in each of the three Prairie Pro- 
vinces. The movement began in 1901 at Indian Head and 
spread rapidly, with the result that there are now in exist- 
ence : in Manitoba, The Manitoba Grain Growers Associa- 
tion; in Saskatchewan, The Saskatchewan Grain Growers 
Association; and, in Alberta, The United Farmers of Al- 
berta. Each of these associations has its local units scat- 
tered throughout its own province. For the last few years, 
therefore, the farmers of the West have had an opportunity 
of realizing the power and the benefits that accrue from 
organization. The latest phase of this activity is the 
adoption of a political platform which may lead to legis- 
lation of great importance not only to all grain growers but 
to the whole of the Dominion of Canada. 

To advance their business interests, the farmers of the 
West have organized two great trading companies in which 
there are already 65,000 shareholders. These companies 
are: United Grain Groioers Limited, and The Saskatche- 
wan Co-operative Elevator Company. The former car- 
ries on a general grain business through its country ele- 
vators scattered throughout the three provinces and, by 
means of oars consigned by farmers, handles live-stock on 
commission, and supplies farmers with machinery and 
general commodities. The latter handles grain through 
its elevators or on consignment, but, as yet, has not en- 



142 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

tered tlie live-stock business and does not deal in machinery 
or supplies. The Saskatchewan Grain Growers Associa- 
tion, through its central office at Regina, has undertaken 
trading activities in farm implements and other farm 
needs. 

Shortly after the Grain Growers Grain Company '^^ be- 
gan its grain business in 1906, it was found that the or- 
ganized farmers of the Prairie Provinces needed a pub- 
lication that would be free to speak out frankly on ques- 
tions in which the farmers were interested. The Grain 
Growers Guide was therefore established for this pur- 
pose; and it began its issues at Winnipeg in 1908. It is 
the official organ of the associations in each of the three 
provinces, and now has a circulation of 51,000 copies 
per week — the largest circulation of any farm paper in 
the West. 

The farmers' trading companies control over 600 coun- 
try elevators and also have at their disposal immense stor- 
age space in terminal elevators at Port William and Port 
Arthur. United Grain Growers Limited own a house 
at Port Arthur with a capacity of 600,000 bushels, and 
have also leased from the Canadian Pacific Railway Com- 
pany at Port William a terminal elevator that holds 
2,500,000 bushels. The Saskatchewan Co-operative Ele- 
vator Company has a 2,500,000-bushel elevator at Port 
Arthur, so that the total storage capacity of the farmers' 

75 The Grain Growers Grain Company was the first of the farmers' 
trading companies and was organized in 1906 without Government 
aid. It was interprovineial in character. In 1913, The Alberta 
Farmers Co-operative Elevator Company was organized for the prov- 
ince of Alberta with Government aid. In 1917, the Grain Growers 
Grain Company and the Alberta Farmers' Co-operative Elevator Com- 
pany amalgamated their interests, so as to form United Grain Grow- 
ers Limited. The Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company was 
organized in 1911 on a strictly provincial basis and received Gov- 
ernment assistance. 



WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 143 

terminal elevators at the water front of Lake Superior is 
5,600,000 bushels. Before the war, The Grain Growers 
Export Company, a subsidiary company of United Grain 
Growers Limited, was also doing an immense export busi- 
ness from E'ew York. Two years ago, however, its full 
office equipment was turned over to the British Govern- 
ment for the benefit of the Allies in the war. 

As bearing upon the progress and power of the farmers' 
companies, it is interesting to note that, following the big 
crop of 1915, these companies actually handled for the 
farmers close upon 100,000,000 bushels of grain ; and also 
that, in the year ending August 31, 1918, the value of 
the machinery and supplies sold to farmers by the farm- 
ers' companies amounted to about $8,000,000. 



CHAPTER III 

The Discoveey ai^d Introduction of Maequis 
Wheat 

I. Introduction 

Maequis Wheat is a household word in western 
Canada, for it is the chief variety of wheat grown in Al- 
herta and Manitoba, while in Saskatchewan it forms about 
90 per cent, of the crop. Moreover, its cultivation has 
increased the wealth of western Canada by many millions 
of dollars a year. It is therefore well worth while to in- 
quire how Marquis wheat came into existence and to 
whom the credit is due for supplying it to the farmers 
in the first place. 

The history of Marquis wheat is by no means so well 
known as it deserves to be, and various more or less 
erroneous ideas are current concerning it. In the in- 
terests of truth, therefore, as well as with a view to sup- 
plying information which should be a source of satisfac- 
tion to every patriotic Canadian, the writer here records 
the results of his own inquiry into the matter. The facts 
with regard to the origin of Marquis, about to be com- 
municated, were obtained in part by the consultation of 
documents but, in the main, by interviewing Dr. Charles 
E. Saunders, who isolated Marquis more than a decade 
ago and whose modesty is only equaled by his skill and 
devotion as Dominion Cerealist. 

II. Dr. William Saunders and His Assistants 

Dr. William Saunders, the organizer and first Director 
of the Dominion Experimental Earms, conceived the idea 

144 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 145 

of improving plants by breeding; and in this work lie 
employed the services of several men, including bis two 
sons, C. E. Saunders (now Dominion Cerealist) and 
A. P. Saunders. Before becoming Director of the Ex- 
perimental Earms, Dr. William Saunders devoted him- 
self to producing new and better fruits by cross-breeding. 
Special attention was paid to raspberries, currants, goose- 
berries, and grapes, and with these he achieved consider- 
able success. One of his grapes, Emerald^ obtained an 
award at the Indian and Colonial Exhibition in 1886; 
and even to-day two of his gooseberries. Pearl and Josselyn 
(his Bed Jacket)^ are well known, and two of his black 
currants. Climax and Saunders, are considered excellent. 
After becoming Director in 1886, Dr. Saunders continued 
his work on fruits with especial reference to hardy apples 
for the Canadian ^North-West.^ However, he also struck 
out in new directions. In particular, he f ocussed his at- 
tention upon wheat and began a long series of observa- 
tions and experiments directed toward the improvement 
of the varieties then being grown in Canada.^ 

Eed Eife became the standard variety of wheat in 
western Canada in the early eighties of the last century. 
It was not only very productive but possessed excellent 
milling and baking qualities, so that it was prized by 

1 Mr. W. T. MacoTin, the Dominion Horticulturalist, is continuing 
the work of Dr. Saunders on hardy apples. Vide W. T. Macoun, 
The Apple in Canada, Its Cultivation and Improvement, Bulletin 
No. 86, Dominion of Canada Dept. of Agriculture, Division of Horti- 
culture, Ottawa, 1917, 

For a historical sketch of the work of Dr. Saunders in improving 
the currant, gooseberry, and raspberry, vide Bulletin No. 56 on 
"Bush Fruits" by W. T. Macoun, 19oV, pp. 62-64. Dr. Saunders' 
first crosses were made with gooseberries in 1868. 

2 Tide Experimental Farms Reports and Bulletins from 1888 on- 
wards; also Dr. W. Saunders' Review of the Work with Wheat at 
the Experimental Farms in the Experimental Farms Reports for 
1903, pp. 13-15. 



146 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

millers and bakers alike; and its first grade, Manitoba 
No. 1 Hard, fetched the highest price in the British market 
and became famous throughout the world. Unfortu- 
nately, however, in years with early frosts, Eed Fife was 
often frozen in the fields; and, when this happened, the 
farmers cried out for a variety of wheat which would 
mature a few days earlier in the season. In the hope of 
meeting this demand, Dr. William Saunders imported a 
considerable number of varieties of wheat from many 
different countries, grew them alongside of Red Fife at 
the various Experimental Farms, and thus made a large 
number of comparative observations on their time of ripen- 
ing and their yield. Some of these wheats were brought 
from the colder districts of northern Russia, verging on 
the Arctic circle, some from other countries in northern 
parts of Europe, others from different altitudes in the 
Himalaya Mountains of India — from 500 feet to as high 
as 11,000 feet which is about the limit for wheat grow- 
ing in that range — and yet others from the United States 
of America, from Australia, and from Japan. Most of 
these wheats, such as those from the north-western parts of 
the United States and from Australia, proved to be as 
late in ripening as, or even later than. Red Fife, but the 
Russian and Indian wheats usually ripened earlier. How- 
ever, some of the earlier sorts were inferior in their milling 
and baking qualities, and others gave such small crops 
that the growing of most of them had to be abandoned. 
For a time Dr. Saunders thought that Ladoga, a hard 
red Russian wheat which grows in latitude 60 near 
Lake Ladoga, north of Petrograd, and by latitude 600 
miles north of Winnipeg, would solve the problem with 
which he was confronted, for it was found to ripen its 
grains over the whole Dominion about ten days earlier than 
Red Fife and also to give a good yield. After being tested 



Fig. 21. The late Dr. William Saunders, the father of Dr. Charles 
Saunders, the first Director of the Dominion Experimental Farms, and 
the originator of Preston and Huron wheats. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 147 

at the Experimental rarms, therefore, it was sent out to 
several hundreds of farmers in the North-West, a large 
numher of whom reported favorably upon it.^ Thirty- 
years ago, however, it was impossible to make satisfactory 
milling and baking tests, as is done now, with a few pounds 
of wheat only, and some hundreds of bushels were needed 
for this purpose. It was therefore necessary to wait 
several years before enough Ladoga could be procured 
to find out what qualities its flour really had. At length 
Messrs. McLauchlin and Moore of the Eoyal Mour Mills, 
Toronto, agreed to make a thorough test if a car-load 
of Ladoga wheat could be supplied them. In 1892, there- 
fore, the required car-load was obtained by Mr. Angus 
McKay of Indian Head from the Prince Albert district 
in Saskatchewan and conveyed to Toronto. Here the 
milling test was carried out by the Eoyal Flour Mills and 
the baking tests by several of the leading bakers of the 
city. The results of these tests were sadly disappoint- 
ing, for Ladoga flour proved to be deficient in strength 
and produced bread which was very yellow in color and 
of a coarse texture. Thus the hope of replacing Eed 
Fife by the earlier-ripening Ladoga, for export purposes, 
was completely shattered.* 

Whilst making his vain search for a foreign early- 
ripening variety of wheat which should possess, in addi- 
tion to marked earliness, the high productiveness and 
the excellent milling and baking qualities of Eed Fife, 
Dr. William Saunders was also endeavoring to obtain the 
ideal wheat by combining the good qualities of two or 

3 Ladoga Wheat ; Part I by Wm. Saunders ; Part II, Report on the 
Chemical Composition and Physical Characters of Ladoga, Red Fife 
and other varieties of wheat by F. T. Shutt, Bulletin No. 4, Cen- 
tral Experimental Farm, Ottawa, 1889. 

4 William Saunders, Ladoga Wheat, Bulletin No. 18, Central Ex- 
perimental Farm, Ottawa, 1893. 



148 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

more varieties. The method employed was that of cros&- 
breeding, and the first crosses were made at the Central 
Experimental Farm at Ottawa on July 19, 1888. The 
pollen was taken from the flower of one kind of wheat 
and placed on the stigma of another kind from which the 
stamens had been removed; and the cross-bred kernel re- 
sulting was saved as seed for the next year.^ Many hun- 
dreds of crosses were made in this way, particularly be- 
tween Eed Fife or White Fife as one parent and an early- 
ripening wheat, such as Ladoga or one of the Indian 
wheats, as the other. Dr. William Saunders himself made 
many of these crosses at Ottawa but a large number of 
others were made by Dr. A. P. Saunders, Dr. C. E. Saund- 
ers, and Mr. W. T. Macoun, and a few by Mr. J. L. 
McMurray, all of whom acted as his assistants.^ In 1892, 
Dr. A. P. Saunders was sent to the Experimental Farms 
at Brandon in Manitoba, at Indian Head in Saskatche- 
wan, and at Agassiz in British Columbia for the purpose 
of making further crosses ; ^ and the cross-bred kernels 
which had been produced in the West, or their progeny, 
were subsequently transferred to Ottawa where the chief 
work of selection was carried out. As a result of these 
selections, a considerable number of wholly or partially 
purified new varieties of wheat were gradually isolated. 
By the year 1901, fifty-eight of these varieties which had 
undergone plot tests, had received names, and a statement 

5 W. Saunders, How Varieties of Cross-Bred and Hybrid Grains 
Are Produced, Experimental Farms Reports for 1896, pp. 21-22. 
The illustrations were drawn by C. E. Saunders. For a minute de- 
scription of the method of cross-pollination employed by C. E. 
Saunders twelve years later, vide Experimental Farms Reports for 
1908, p. 212. 

6 0/. Experimental Farms Reports: for 1896, p. 20; for 1897, 
pp. 16-17; for 1898, p. 27; for 1900, pp. 14-15; and for 1901, pp. 
15-17. 

7 Experimental Farms Report: for 1892, p. 234; for 1893, p. 336. 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 149 

had been issued for each as to its parentage, the year 
the cross was made, the place where the cross was made, 
and the name of the cross-breeder who made the cross.^ 
Some of these named varieties were distributed to the 
farmers of the West ; and among the most noteworthy of 
them were : Preston and Stanley, each derived from a cross 
between Red Fife and Ladoga, and Huron and Percy, each 
derived from a cross betw^een White Eife and Ladoga. 
The four crosses from which these four cross-bred wheats 
originated, were all made at the Central Experimental 
Farm at Ottawa, the first two by Dr. William Saunders 
himself and the last two by his son, Dr. A. P. Saunders. 
These four wheats all ripen a few days earlier than Red 
Fife but have various defects, especially in regard to their 
milling and baking qualities. This makes them unde- 
sirable for export from western Canada, and in conse- 
quence they have only been grown there on a relatively 
small scale; but a considerable amount of Preston, some- 
times under other names, is still grown in the great central 
spring-wheat region of the United States.^ 

8 Experimental Farms Report: for 1896, p. 20; for 1897, pp. 16-17; 
for 1898, p. 27; for 1900, pp. 14-15; and for 1901, pp. 15-17. 

9 The Preston originated by William Saunders was grown at the 
Minnesota Agricultural Station in 1895 as Minnesota No. 188 and 
was distributed under this number. The seed soon appeared for 
sale under various new names; and in a few years it could scarcely 
be found under its real name in the U. S. A. By the boards of 
trade of Minneapolis and Chicago, it was wrongly called Velvet 
Chaff, for it has a hairless chaff; and on the farms it was called 
Ea/rly Java, South Dakota Climax, Bearded Fife, Red Fife, Mvrv- 
nesota No. 188, and Velvet Chaff. Under one or other of these 
names Preston has given good yields in central and eastern South 
Dakota and is rather widely grown there. It is found commonly 
also in eastern North Dakota and in parts of Minnesota. Selec- 
tions of Preston have been given a series of Cereal Investigation 
numbers. These facts are stated by C. R. Ball in Varieties of Hard 
Spring Wheat, Farmers' Bulletin No. 680, U. S. Department of 
Agriculture, 1915, pp. 15-16. 



150 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Crossing two kinds of wheat is a relatively simple op- 
eration, the technique of which it is not difficult to ac- 
quire. However, new varieties are not obtained in one 
generation only; for a cross-bred kernel, in succeeding 
generations, always gives rise to a large number of plant 
types which differ from one another in one or more char- 
acters — such as length and strength of straw, length, 
compactness, and uprightness of the heads, the color and 
hairiness of the chaff, presence or absence of awns, color, 
shape, size, and milling qualities of the grains, liability of 
the grains to shell, earliness in maturing, resistance to dis- 
eases, baking qualities of the flour, and so forth — and 
most careful selection through a series of years is neces- 
sary in order to isolate the best of its progeny. For this 
laborious work. Dr. William Saunders soon came to lack 
the necessary leisure. Owing to the great demands which 
the ever-growing general work of the Experimental Farms 
made upon his time and energies, the task of producing 
new wheats suited for the Canadian West had not pro- 
ceeded very far before its prosecution came to a stand- 
still. Dr. Saunders became so busy that, in the end, he 
was unable to exercise even a reasonable supervision of 
the wheat-breeding experiments. The result was that for 
several years no fresh experiments were undertaken, and 
almost all that happened was that the different kinds of 
grain were planted out upon the experimental plots and 
the little harvests duly gathered in. In this way various 
strains of wheat were kept in existence. At length, in 
1903, Dr. Charles E. Saunders was appointed by the Gov- 
ernment to take up the work of wheat-breeding; and he 
thus inherited the whole mass of material which had been 
brought together at the Central Experimental Farm. Dr. 
William Saunders, after a long and faithful service to 
the Dominion, retired in 1911 and passed away in his 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQTJIS WHEAT 151 

home at London, Ontario, on September 13, 1914, at the 
ripe old age of Y8. The most important of all the lines of 
endeavor which he initiated at Ottawa, undoubtedly, was 
the raising of new cereals ; and it is its highly successful 
continuation by his third son Charles that we shall now at- 
tempt to follow. 

III. The Selection of Marquis hy Dr. Charles E. Saunders 

Dr. Charles E. Saunders, on becoming the Cerealist for 
the Dominion of Canada, took up his quarters at the Cen- 
tral Experimental Farm at Ottawa and there carefully 
re-selected all the more or less mixed wheats which came 
into his hands. The result of this work was that in 1904 
he discovered Marquis Wheat. By reference to the ex- 
perimental records, proof was obtained that this particular 
strain had been produced from one of the crossings made 
in 1892 by his brother. Dr. A. P. Saunders, during the 
period when Dr. William Saunders and his two sons were 
working together. ^^ The male parent of the cross was 
Red Fife and the female an early ripening Indian wheat 
known as Hard Red Calcutta. It is to be noted, however, 
that Hard Red Calcutta is a trade expression, not for one 
particular variety of wheat but for a mixture of several 
varieties. There must, therefore, always be a certain 
amount of doubt as to the exact type which served as 

10 Dr. Arthur Percy Saunders took his degree of Ph. D. at Johns 
Hopkins University, and is now Professor of Chemistry at Hamilton 
College, Clinton, New York State, U. S. A. His father needed 
some one with trained fingers to make some cereal crosses, and 
Dr. A. P. Saimders therefore undertook this work during one or 
two of his summer vacations. Thus his connection with agricul- 
ture in the larger sense of the term was of a very temporary nature. 
However, the influence of his early years spent at the Experimental 
Farm remains with him yet; for, although by profession a chemist, 
he is also an enthusiastic amateur florist and a breeder of peonies, 
etc. 



152 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the female parent when the cross was made. The result 
of the cross, in a few generations, was a mixture of types 
including Marquis. Marquis, therefore, remained mixed 
with other sorts of wheat until it was discovered in 1904 
by Dr. Saunders, in the course of his systematic work of 
re-selection of all the mixed wheats which previously had 
been produced by cross-breeding at Ottawa. ^^ 

The work of re-selecting the cross-bred varieties of 
wheat which resulted in the discovery of Marquis was no 
mean task ; for, altogether, there were nearly one hundred 
of these varieties, and each variety (whether recorded un- 
der a name or under a number) contained several strains. 
The strains within a single variety often presented radical 

11 Cf. C. E. Saunders, Report of the Dominion Cerealist for the 
year 1911-1912 in the Annual Report on Experimental Farms, 
Ottawa, 1913, pp. 118-119; also, by the same author: Marquis 
Wheat, Census and Statistics Monthly, Ottawa, 1911, p. 332. Dr. 
Saunders once wrote a brief article on Marquis for the Saskatche- 
wan Phoenix; but this I have not seen. 

Dr. Saunders, in reference to the cross from which Marquis 
originated, says : " The cross was made on one of the branch 
experimental farms and the cross-bred seeds, or their progeny, w^ere 
subsequently transferred to Ottawa. Here some selection was done, 
but the work was not carried far enough to separate out simple 
fixed types. It was therefore a mixture, lacking in uniformity, which 
came into the possession of the writer when he took charge of the 
Cereal Division. By a careful study of individual plants selected 
from the plot, and especially by applying the chewing test to 
ascertain the gluten strength and probable bread-making value, 
radical differences in quality were found, and a few of the most 
promising plants were used as a foundation of the new strains. 
These strains were propagated (each separately) for some years 
until they had been sufficiently studied to ascertain which was the 
best. The best strain was named Marquis." Cereal Breeding in 
the Dominion Experimental Farms during the Past Decade, Transac- 
tions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third Series, Vol. VII, Section 
IV, 1913, p. 152. The branch farms which Dr. A. P. Saunders 
visited in 1892 were Brandon, Indian Head, and Agassiz. It is 
not certain at which of these farms the cross was made, but Dr. 
Charles Saunders thinks it was probably Agassiz. 



Fig. 22. A head of 
Marquis Wheat. Natural 
size. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 153 

differences. Dr. Saunders worked steadily through all 
that material, studying head after head and selecting 
out as many different and promising ones as he could find. 
Each selected strain was then propagated in pure condi- 
tion either from a single head or from two or more heads 
of a single plant. In subsequent years, those strains 
which proved unsatisfactory were rejected and destroyed, 
with the result that to-day only a small fraction of the 
strains originally selected remain in existence; but this is 
as it should be, for good experimental work in plant breed- 
ing, by its very nature, always involves an extremely high 
percentage of failures. In addition to selecting the best 
strains from the cross-bred varieties. Dr. Saunders also re- 
selected a considerable number of commercial wheats. All 
this work which was carried out systematically year after 
year in the faith that something of importance would 
result from it, demanded much patience, care, and good 
judgment. But the reward was great; for, from among 
the hundreds of strains investigated for their various quali- 
ties. Marquis finally emerged; and as in successive years 
it proved its excellence, first in plot tests, then in fields 
upon isolated farms, and finally upon vast stretches of 
the sea-wide prairie-land in both Canada and the United 
States, Dr. Saunders was given the satisfaction of real- 
izing that his bright dream of one day helping the farm- 
ers of the Golden West had at last come true. 

At first there were only a few grains of the precious 
Marquis, all obtained from a single head picked by Dr. 
Charles E. Saimders in the summer of 1903 ; but how 
great were their potentialities! These grains were 
planted out in the spring of 1904 in a tiny plot in the 
experimental garden. Soon they began to sprout, and at 
leng-th there was a small patch of green containing only 
twelve plants in all. In August the little harvest was 



154 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

reaped. Tlie yield was mucli less than a single pound of 
grain; and the first crop of the wheat that was destined 
within a dozen years to overtax the mightiest elevators in 
the land, was stored away in the winter of 1904-05 in 
a paper packet no larger than an envelope. But just as 
a few sparks are endowed with tremendous destructive 
possibilities, so that, by starting a conflagration, they may 
bring red ruin to an ancient city, reducing its treasures 
to blackened heaps; so, in happy contrast therewith, the 
little collection of grains in the Marquis packet embodied 
vast constructive possibilities which, having been for- 
tunately realized with the passage of time, have been a 
potent factor in the uprearing of many a snug farmhouse 
and many a stately civic building. In very deed, that 
first handful of Marquis grains has brought naught but 
increased prosperity in its wake and by its influence has 
made farming on the broad prairie-land a more attractive 
industry. 

IV. The New Wheat is Named 

Dr. Saunders christened his new wheat Marquis for 
the simple purpose of distinguishing it from other wheats 
of which he already had many kinds in his laboratory; 
and up to the present even the most extreme socialist has 
never objected to this title. 

V. The Qualities of Marquis are Investigated 

Dr. Saunders then set to work to. investigate the quali- 
ties of Marquis. In the first place he observed that it be- 
longed to the early group of wheats, i. e., that it ripened 
its grains in summer earlier than most of the common 
wheats of Canada. Earliness, of course, is a very im- 
portant quality, for the sooner the grain ripens, the less 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 155 

danger is there of its being injured or destroyed by Rust or 
early frosts. But another good quality made its appear- 
ance as the study of the annual harvests continued, namely, 
yield. Marquis was found to give an excellent yield, this 
being in part due to the marked plumpness of the grains. 
Evidently, therefore, the new wheat behaved well in the 
field. But besides good field qualities, it is necessary for 
a successful wheat to have good baking and milling quali- 
ties. It was essential, therefore, to investigate these lat- 
ter also. In the winter of 1903-04, Dr. Saunders did 
not possess a well-equipped laboratory and had at his 
disposal neither a mill to grind wheat into flour nor 
an oven to bake bread. But, at that time, even if mills 
and ovens had been available, it would have been im- 
possible to use them for testing the milling and baking 
qualities of Marquis, owing to the fact that the number 
of grains with which the tests might be made was limited 
to the few that could be spared from the single head of 
wheat selected in 1903 for seed purposes. The clew to the 
milling and baking qualities of Marquis was therefore ob- 
tained by chewing the grains. It was found that on 
taking a few grains of the Marquis wheat and chewing 
them as if one were chewing chewing-gum, an elastic mass 
was obtained which was of good color, i. e., not too yellow 
but pale cream or whitish. The color is of importance, 
for the lighter it is, the lighter, and therefore more at- 
tractive-looking, will be the flour produced from the wheat 
in a mill. The light color of the elastic mass, when taken 
from the mouth, was therefore all in favor of the Marquis 
wheat so far as the miller is concerned. The elasticity 
of the mass gave an indication of the way the wheat would 
behave as to baking qualities. The elasticity of the mass 
produced by chewing a few grains of wheat of different 
varieties varies greatly; but, as a rule, the more elastic 



156 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

or rubber-like the mass, tbe bigger the loaf that can be 
made from the flour, or, in other words, the better the 
baking qualities. The elasticity is due to the quality of 
the gluten, a mixture of complex proteins which are present 
in the grains along with the starch. Dr. Saunders found 
that a few grains of the Marquis wheat, when chewed in 
the mouth, produced an elastic mass which was rubber- 
like in a high degree, and therefore concluded that Mar- 
quis wheat had an excellent quality of gluten and would 
make large and palatable loaves. Thus, then, by a care- 
ful series of observations extending over three years, 
Dr. Saunders discovered that Marquis wheat behaved well 
in plot tests in respect to the early ripening of its grains 
and in having a good yield, and that it possessed milling 
and baking qualities of the most desirable kind. 

Dr. Saunders propagated his new wheat from 1904 to 
1906, so that it gradually increased in quantity. The few 
ounces of grain collected in August, 1904, in successive 
harvests increased in amount in geometrical progression, 
and, by the autumn of 1906, about two-thirds of a bushel 
were available. The chewing tests for milling and baking 
qualities were carried out systematically for three years, 
in 1904, 1905, and 1906. Toward the close of this period, 
a small flour mill, a fermenting-cupboard designed by Dr. 
Saunders himself, and an oven, were set up in the cereal 
laboratory; and with this apparatus many experiments 
were made with different wheats with a view to obtaining 
an accurate knowledge of the best methods of carrying out 
milling and baking tests. By the year 1906, the crop of 
Marquis wheat had at last increased sufiiciently to permit 
of some of it being made into flour by grinding the grains 
in the mill, and of loaves being made by baking in the 
oven. Rigorous tests for the milling and baking qualities 
of Marquis, made with the new apparatus in the winter 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 157 

of 1906-07 and the following years, fully confirmed the 
original estimates which had been arrived at by using 
the teeth as grindstones and the mouth as a substitute for 
an oven. 

YI. The Introduction of Marquis into Western Canada 

In the spring of 1907, all the seed that could be spared, 
about 23 lbs., was sent from Ottawa to the Indian Head 
Experimental Farm in Saskatchewan, and there the grain 
was sown on two plots, one of one-fortieth of an acre and 
the other of one-fifth of an acre. In 1908, further tests 
were made not only at Indian Head but also at the Brandon 
Experimental Earm in Manitoba. The seasons of 1907 
and 1908 were somewhat unfavorable for wheat in gen- 
eral, and, under these conditions. Marquis did astonish- 
ingly well, far better than Eed Eife which had always 
been regarded as the best wheat and with which it was 
compared in the experimental plots. In the spring of 
1909 the distribution of Marquis to the public began. 
Eour hundred samples were sent out and the farmers who 
received them sowed the new wheat in many scattered 
places in western Canada. Marquis thus spread from 
Saskatchewan to Manitoba on the east and Alberta on 
the west. But this is not all, for it disregarded the in- 
ternational boundary line and peacefully penetrated into 
the United States, where it now covers vast areas, more 
especially in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota. 
Eurthermore, it is now much grown in eastern Canada, 
especially in Ontario and Quebec; and it has found its 
way into the Kamloops district of British Columbia. In 
the Maritime Provinces, however, it does not usually do 
so well. Its fame has attracted universal attention, and 
it is now being tested in almost every wheat-growing 
country in the world. Recently it was greatly in demand 



158 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

for seed purposes in France but could not be shipped 
in the quantity required. 

Since the spring of 1909 when farmers began to sow 
Marquis for the first time, the growing of this wheat in 
Canada has spread enormously, and Marquis is now by far 
the chief wheat grown in the West. Practical experience 
with Marquis by tens of thousands of farmers on millions 
of acres has completely justified the original estimate of 
the wheat made by Dr. Saunders in the quiet of his 
laboratory. The introduction of Marquis wheat is one of 
the greatest practical triumphs that Canada has ever had, 
one that is perennially fruitful, not impoverishing but 
ever increasing the wealth of our country and making it 
a better land to live in. But this is not all, for Marquis 
extends its blessings far beyond the bounds of this coun- 
try, not merely to the United States of America where 
it is also grown on a large scale, but to the Old World. 
Especially in Europe, to which it is borne by a great fleet 
of ships across the broad Atlantic, it adds to the quantity 
and improves the quality of the daily bread of millions of 
toilers who have never heard its name. 

YII. TJie Introduction of Marquis into the United States 
of America 

The invasion of the United States of America by Mar- 
quis was rapidly accomplished, and took place in the fol- 
lowing manner. After Marquis had been grown in the 
Prairie Provinces for a year or two, from 1909 onwards, 
farmers in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and 
neighboring States, soon learned the news of its won- 
derful success from their Canadian friends. The result 
was that individual farmers in these States imported a 
certain amount of the new wheat for seed purposes. The 
favorable harvests which they obtained, attracted the at- 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 159 

tention of other farmers who also became anxious to 
give the new wheat a trial. To meet this demand, several 
car-loads of additional seed were imported by various 
seed firms in ISTorth Dakota in 1912. When Marquis be- 
gan to arrive at the big flour mills of Minneapolis, the 
millers immediately recognized its fine milling and baking 
qualities; and they became enthusiastic advocates of its 
introduction into the l^orthwestem States. Eor example, 
the Kussell, Miller Milling Company of Minneapolis, in 
the fall of 1913, made arrangements with the Angus 
McKay Farm Seed Company of Indian Head for the 
importation of nearly 100,000 bushels of Marquis from 
the Indian Head and Eegina regions; and they supplied 
this seed to the farmers of ISTorth Dakota, Minnesota, etc., 
at cost. In order to make certain that this large amount 
of seed should be of first-class quality, the Kussell, Miller 
Milling Company communicated with Professor H. L. 
Bolley, the Seed Commissioner for ITorth Dakota, and re- 
quested him to inspect the fields from which the seed was 
to come. Professor Bolley, who had long been convinced 
of the importance of bringing into the United States seed- 
wheat of high quality and who had perceived the good 
qualities of Marquis when grown on his experimental plots 
at Fargo, gladly undertook the mission ; and the 100,000 
bushels of Marquis duly arrived at its destination in ex- 
cellent condition. ^2 A further 37,000 bushels were im- 

12 The above facts were obtained by personal inquiry from Pro- 
fessor H. L. Bolley at Fargo, and from Mr. H. S. Helm of the 
Russell, Miller Milling Co., at Minneapolis. Mr. D. G. Mackay, of 
the Angus Mackay Farm Seed Co., gave the following additional 
information. The first two bushels exported by the Angus Mackay 
Farm Seed Co. were sent to the Northrup, King Co., of Minneapolis 
in 1910. This Company sent the two bushels to a farmer who 
lived near Grand Forks, N. D., in the Red River Valley; and the 
farmer contracted to increase it in amount for the Company. By 
the autumn of 1912, the crop had already become large and it was 
shipped as a car lot to the Russell, Miller Milling Co., at Minneapolis. 



ICO ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

ported for seed purposes and supplied to the farmers at cost 
bj the Andrews Grain Company, also of Minneapolis.^^ 
Other firms made similar importations on a smaller scale, 
so that, altogether, about 200,000 bushels of Marquis 
were brought across the Line and made available for seed 
in the spring of 1913. In 1914 still more Canadian 
Marquis was brought in. Most of the imported seed was 
sold in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana, and small 
quantities in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wash- 
ington. The importations for 1913 and 1914, together 
with the seed grown at home in 1913, sufficed to sow about 
half a million acres in 1914. The total crop of Marquis 
in the United States, in the fall of 1914, was probably 
about 7,000,000 bushels and of this 6,360,000 bushels were 
produced in Minnesota and the two Dakotas.^* This crop 
gave a large supply of home-grown seed and in conse- 
quence importations of further seed from Canada prac- 
tically ceased. ^^ 

This firm's analyst immediately recognized the high gluten con- 
tents of the new wheat with the result that the Eussell, Miller Milling 
Co. made further enquiries about Marquis and initiated their cam- 
paign for its introduction into the Northwestern States. 

13 From the records of the Andrews Grain Company. The in- 
formation was kindly supplied to me by Mr. Godfrey at an in- 
terview in the office of the firm. 

14 C. R. Ball and J. A. Clark, Experiments with Marquis Wheat, 
Bulletin No. 400, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of 
Agriculture, Oct., 1916, p. 4. 

15 The following are the firms which purchased Marquis seed 
from the Angus McKay Farm Seed Co., or through it, during the 
first distribution of the seed in the United States, and the number 
of bushels of seed which each bought: 

Firms Locality Bushels 

Russell, Miller Milling Co Minneapolis 111,552 

Andrews Grain Co Minneapolis 40,620 

Northrup Grain Co Minneapolis 11,000 

D. B. Shaw Tower City, N. D 6,400 

Harvey Milling Co Harvey, N. D 2,500 

Crookston Milling Co Crookston, Minn 2,500 



DISCOVERY OF MAEQUIS WHEAT 161 

The result of importing and growing the seed of Mar- 
quis on a large scale was that this wheat made very rapid 
strides in the N"orthwestem States. Thus in ISTorth 
Dakota, by 1915 — a year when this State is reported 
to have produced 152,000,000 bushels of wheat ^^ — a 
very large percentage of the crop, at least 25 per cent., con- 
sisted of Marquis; ^"^ and now (1918) Marquis is the chief 
bread-wheat grown there, forming perhaps 75 per cent, 
of the whole crop.^^ 

In ^N'orth Dakota, owing to general farming operations, 
particularly the uninterrupted wheat culture on the same 
land year after year, the wheat in that State, previously 
to the introduction of Marquis, had become very gener- 
ally mixed through additions made by volunteer wheats, 
etc. One of the evil consequences of this was that the 
ripening of the grain in the fields was irregular : the heads 
did not all mature at the same time and farmers found 
themselves in difficulty in deciding the time of cutting. 

Firms Locality Bushels 

W. J. Jennison Co Minneapolis 2,500 

Baldwin Flour Mills Moorhead, Minn 2,000 

McGill and Co Fargo, N. D 1,100 

L. L. May and Co St. Paul, Minn 1,000 

Hanson and Barson Thief Kiver Falls 1,000 



Total 182,172 

The direct importers of a large portion of these lots of wheat was 
the O. J. Barnes Co., of Grand Forks, N. D.; and this firm there- 
fore played an important part in introducing Marquis into the 
United States. Information supplied by the Angus Mackay Farm 
Seed Co. 

16 Year Book of the U. S. Department of Agriculture for 1915, 
p. 422. 

17 This estimate is lower than that made for me by Professor 
Bolley of the North Dakota Agricultural College and by Mr. 
H. S. Helm of the Russell, Miller Milling Co., but is in accord 
with the Table given further within this Section. 

18 Estimate made by Professor H. L. Bolley of the North Dakota 
Agricultural College. 



162 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

And when the crop was harvested and sent to the mills, 
analysis showed that samples of what was nominally a 
single kind of wheat, such as Bluestem, contained all sorts 
of kernels, and were very unequal with respect to gluten 
contents. The want of uniformity in the crops of Pres- 
ton and Bluestem which were once the principal wheats 
grown in E'orth Dakota, was one of the chief business 
diflficulties with which millers had to contend. E'ow Mar- 
quis, in 1913, was a fresh stock of wheat of uniform 
variety. It came to ^N'orth Dakota just when the need of 
more uniform seed was most felt ; and by replacing mixed 
wheats, apart from its good qualities of high yield, earli- 
ness, etc., it proved a great boon to farmers and millers 
alike and gave a new impetus to wheat culture. 

In Minnesota, Marquis constitutes more than one-half 
and approaching three-quarters of the crop of spring 
wheat. ^^ Of the acreage in this rich State devoted to 
wheat this year, 1918, only 80,000 acres (chiefly in the 
extreme south) were sown with winter wheat, whereas 
about 4,000,000 acres were sown with spring wheat.^^ 
]^ow if we take one-half of this 4,000,000, namely 2,000,- 
000 acres, as having been sown with Marquis; and, fur- 
ther, if we assume that the average number of bushels 
of wheat per acre will be the same as it was for spring 
wheat in 1917, namely 17.6 ;2^ then the yield of Mar- 
quis in Minnesota this year will be approximately 35,000,- 
000 bushels. If, however, we assume, as seems almost 
certain, that at least 65 per cent, of the total crop will be 
Marquis, and that the total crop of spring wheat in Min- 
nesota this year will be as estimated on September 1, 

19 Facts supplied by Professor Andrew Boss of the Agronomy De- 
partment of the University of Minnesota. 

20 Ihid. 

21 Year Book of the United States Department of Agriculture for 
1917, p. 617. 



DISCOVEKY OF MAKQUIS WHEAT 



163 



1918, namely 72,417,000 busliels,^^ then to this crop 
Marquis will contribute approximately 47,000,000 bushels. 
These estimates are sufficient to indicate to how great an 
extent Marquis must have replaced other grains such as 
Preston and Bluestem in Minnesota in the short period 
of five years which began in 1913 when it was first in- 
troduced from Canada on a large scale. But the end is 
not yet ; for Marquis is becoming more and more favored 




Fig. 28. Reference map for the United States. 

by the farmers owing to its excellent yield, its plump, 
heavy, rich red-colored, highly uniform grains, its earli- 
ness, and its value to millers, and it appears destined in 
the very near future still further to strengthen its posi- 
tion as the dominant spring wheat of Minnesota. 

One of the maps in the excellent Geography of the 
World's Agriculture, recently published at Washington, 
shows the distribution of spring wheat in the United 

22 Monthly Crop Report, October, 1918, Bureau of Crop Estimates, 
Washington. 



164 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

States. ^^ A single black dot, in any locality, indicates 
a crop from 5,000 acres. A glance at tlie map shows that 
the dots are most densely aggregated in ^NTorth Dakota, 
South Dakota, and Minnesota ; and thus, by a pictorial set- 
ting forth of statistical data, one at once becomes con- 
vinced that these three States are the chief of those that 
grow spring wheat. A further study of the map reveals 
the fact that spring wheat is also largely grown in Mon- 
tana as well as in a belt of States surrounding those al- 
ready named, and in scattered districts elsewhere. 'Now 
Marquis is a spring wheat, and on this account its dis- 
tribution is of necessity confined to the spring-wheat States 
where of course it has to compete with other spring wheats 
of which the chief are Velvet Chaff (Preston), Fife (also 
called Red Fife, Scotch Fife, etc.), and Bluestem. The 
first four States in order of importance, so far as Marquis 
is concerned, are: N^orth Dakota, Minnesota, South Da- 
kota, and Montana; but Marquis is also grown, although 
in much smaller quantities: to the south, in western I^e- 
braska; to the west, at certain altitudes in Colorado, in 
Wyoming, at altitudes between 800 and 4,500 feet in 
Idaho, and in the State of Washington; and to the east, 
in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and New 
York.^^ In the spring of this year, 1918, in order to in- 
crease the supply of bread for the Allies in the Great War, 
the farmers of the six last-mentioned easterly States con- 
siderably extended their spring-wheat area, so that it be- 
came much greater than it had been in 1917. To provide 
seed for the additional land. Marquis was made available 

23 Finch and Baker, Geography of the World's Agriculture, U. S. 
Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office, Washing- 
ton, 1917. 

24 For this geographical information I am indebted to Mr. C. R. 
Ball of Washington, Dr. E. K. Stakman of St. Paul, and to Dr. 
Charles E. Saunders. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 165 

in large quantities at Minneapolis, Buffalo, and at other 
places, so that it is probable that this year one-half the 
spring wheat in the six States under discussion has con- 
sisted of this variety.^^ 

Marquis was first grown in the Pacific [N'orthwest in 
considerable quantities during the season 1914. The in- 
crease was sold for seed, and by 1916 Marquis began to 
be shipped away. Some of it found its way to the mark- 
ets of the Central States; and this led Professor C. H. 
Bailey to make a careful investigation of its qualities. 
He visited the so-called Inland Empire and found that the 
greater part of the Marquis wheat was being raised : in the 
Palouse district near Pullman (Washington) and Mos- 
cow (Idaho), in the ^ez Perce district, particularly 
around Genesee and Lewiston (Idaho), and on the Camas 
Prairie between Keubens and Grangeville (Idaho). Pro- 
fessor Bailey collected samples of the wheat in all these 
districts, tested them in his laboratory at the University 
of Minnesota, and came to the conclusion that the soft red 
and white wheats of the Inland Empire districts, such as 
Jones Winter Fife, Little Club, Bed Russian, and Forty- 
fold, are generally inferior in baking qualities to Marquis 
and Turkey wheat grown in the same localities. ^^ 

To what extent, in the end. Marquis will establish itself 
in the Pacific l^orthwest, is as yet uncertain. It appears 
to be particularly well adapted to the higher altitudes of 
the Camas Prairie, since it matures there sufficiently early 
to escape the frost of late summer. ^^ Moreover, as we 
have seen, Pacific J^orthwest Marquis has come off with 

25 From information sent in a letter by Mr. C. R. Ball, of the 
OflBee of Cereal Investigations, Washington. 

26 C. H. Bailey, The Quality of Western-grown Spring Wheat, 
Journal of the American Society of Agronomy, Vol. 9, 1917, pp. 
155-161. 

27 C. H. Bailey, loc. cit., p. 156. 



166 ESSAYS OK WHEAT 

flying colors in the baking tests ; but there is another fact 
of importance to consider, namely, yield. Messrs. Ball 
and Clark have come to the conclusion that while in the 
great central spring-wheat States Marquis out-yields the 
other Common spring-wheats, yet west of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, at various stations, Marquis is out-yielded by the 
standard varieties of soft white spring wheats and by sev- 
eral other varieties newly introduced. ^^ Marquis must 
therefore be considered as still on trial in the Pacific 
l^orthwest, and a few more years must pass before its 
exact position in respect to other wheats has there become 
a settled one. 

In Montana, Marquis formed 45 per cent, of the wheat 
crop in 1917, as against 40 per cent, for winter wheat 
and 8 per cent, for Durum. Marquis out-yielded Durum, 
but was itself out-yielded by winter wheat to the extent 
of 3.2 bushels per acre.^® However, winter wheat in 
Montana is not a uniform success; for, in the principal 
spring-wheat sections of this State, early in the spring 
of 1916, a thaw followed by a frost killed most of the fall- 
sown Turkey wheat. In consequence of this, a large part 
of the Turkey-wheat acreage was reseeded to Marquis, 
which thus made a proportionate gain over its competi- 
tors.3^ 

In order to realize the better with what speed Marquis 
has increased its cultivation in the four chief spring-wheat 
States, and to perceive the effect which Marquis has had 
upon other kinds of wheat in the vast struggle for varietal 
predominance upon the western plains, we shall now turn 
our attention to certain data recently published by the 

28 C. R. Ball and J. Allen Clark, Experiments with. Marquis wheat, 
Bulletin No. 400, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of 
Agriculture, October, 1916, pp. 27, 35, 40, etc. 

29 For these data, see the table wMcb follows. 

30 C. H. Bailey, loc. cit., p. 158. 




Fig. 29. Spike of Marquis wheat compared witli spikes of Minnesota standard 
varieties. A, Minnesota No. 163 or Glyndon Fife; B, Marquis; C, Minnesota 
No. 169 or Haynes' Bluestem; D, Velvet Chaff (Preston). Natural size. From 
Bulletin No. 137 on Marquis Wheat by A. C. Arny and C. H. Bailey. Courtesy of 
the United States Department of Agriculture. 



•M •Mini A 

Fig. 30. Kernels of Marquis wheat compared with kernels of Minne- 
sota standard varieties. A, Minnesota No. 169 or Haynes' Bluestem; 
B, Marquis; C, Minnesota No. 163 or Glyndon Fife; D, Velvet Chaff 
(iPreston). Twice natural size. From Bulletin No. 137 on Marquis 
Wheat by A. C. Arny and C. H. Bailey. Courtesy of the United States 
Department of Agriculture. 



DISCOVEKY OF MAKQUIS WHEAT 



167 



Bureau of Crop Estimates at Washington. ^^ These data, 
reproduced below in their original tabular form, provide 
us with the estimated percentage which each important 
variety of wheat contributed to the crop of wheat in Min- 
nesota and the two Dakotas in each of the years 1914, 1916 
and 1917, and similar figures for Montana in 1917. For 
1915, however, the estimates are lacking except for Durum. 
Velvet Chaff is another name for Preston. 



Percentages of the Total Crop for the Chief Wheat Varieties 





Mar- 


Velvet 


Blue- 


Du- 


Fife 


Win- 


Other 




quis 


Chaff 


stem 


rum 




ter 




MINNE- 


Per 


Per 


Per 


Per 


Per 


Per 


Per 


SOTA 


cent. 


cent. 


cent. 


cent. 


cent. 


cent. 


cent. 


1917 


46.0 


26.0 


18.0 


3.0 


3.0 


3.0 


1.0 


1916 


30.7 


28.9 


30.8 


2.2 


3.8 


3.3 


0.3 


1915 






. . . 


1.9 


. . . 


. . . 


98.1 


1914 


3.0 


30.0 


52.0 


2.0 


7.0 


2.0- 


4.0 


NOKTH 
















DAKOTA 
















1917 


43.0 


10.0 


12.0 


25.0 


8.0 


1.0 


1.0 


1916 


38.3 


12.2 


14.1 


18.5 


15.9 


0.5 


0.5 


1915 






. . . 


14.5 


. . . 


. . . 


85.5 


1914 


5.0 


11.0 


45.0 


13.0 


21.0 




4.0 


SOUTH 




/ 












DAKOTA 




J 












1917 


43.0 


A.^S) 


11.0 


20.0 


3.0 


3.0 


.0 


1916 


22.5 


28.4 


22.8 


12.0 


2.6 


11.5 


0.2 


1915 




. . . 


... 


22.7 


. . . 


. . . 


77.3 


1914 


3.0 


31.0 


30.0 


21.0 


11.0 


3.0 


1.0 


MON- 
















TANA 
















1917 


45.0 


1.0 


3.0 


8.0 


2.0 


40.0 


1.0 



31 Monthly Crop Report for August, 1918, Bureau of Crop Esti- 
mates, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, August, 1918, 
p. 95. 



168 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

An inspection of the Table shows us that the percentage 
of the total wheat crop contributed by Marquis increased 
from 1914 to 191 Y : in Minnesota from 3 to 46 per cent. ; in 
North Dakota from 5 to 43 per cent. ; in South Dakota 
from 3 to 43 per cent. ; and in Montana from some small 
unrecorded amount to 45 per cent. Stated more generally, 
the figures indicate that Marquis increased in popularity 
in the great central spring-wheat region to such an extent 
that, although it formed less than 5 per cent, of the total 
crop in 1914, by 1917 it had come to form nearly one- 
half the total crop. But even this does not mark the final 
triumph of Marquis over its competitors, for it was again 
sown last spring in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, 
and Montana, in greatly increased measure. The actual 
figures for 1918 will not be available for some months, 
but Mr. C. E. Ball, of the Office of Cereal Investigations 
at Washington, has informed the writer that he believes 
that Marquis this year will contribute at least 65 per cent, 
to the total wheat crop of these four States, and possibly 
a little more. 

It is interesting to note how the other varieties of wheat 
have withstood the onslaught of the invader from the north 
in the struggle for supremacy. Velvet Chaff (Preston) 
has about maintained its position in North Dakota but has 
decreased in Minnesota by 13 per cent, of its original 
amount in 1914, and in South Dakota by 35 per cent. 
Bluestem and Fife (Ked Fife, Scotch Fife, etc.), have 
suffered disastrously. Bluestem, which in 1914 was facile 
princeps among the wheat sorts of Minnesota and North 
Dakota, and which shared an equal rule with Velvet Chaff 
in South Dakota, has decreased its crop since 1914: in 
Minnesota by 65 per cent., in North Dakota by 73 per 
cent., and in South Dakota by 63 per cent. It is evident 
that Marquis is rapidly replacing Bluestem in these States 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 1^'^ 

and that already in the space of four seasons it has cut 
down the cultivation of the older variety to one-third of 
what it was originally. Fife had much less ground to 
give up than Bluestem but, nevertheless, since 1914, its 
crop has decreased : in Minnesota by 57 per cent. ; in North 
Dakota by 62 per cent, and in South Dakota by 73 per 
cent. 

Durum wheat, from which macaroni is made, as its 
name indicates, has very hard kernels, and it differs in 
various respects from the so-called Common Wheats such 
as Velvet Chaff, Bluestem and Fife.^^ Like Marquis, as 
the figures in the Table show, it is increasing in popularity 
in Minnesota and North Dakota, although not nearly so 
fast ; but in South Dakota it is merely holding its place. 

On account of climatic conditions. Winter wheat can- 
not be grown with much success in Minnesota and the two 
Dakotas, and is therefore never likely to be a serious com- 
petitor of Marquis in these States. In 1917 Winter wheat 
contributed only three per cent, to the total crop in Min- 
nesota and South Dakota, and only 1 per cent, in North 
Dakota. 

It is a remarkable tribute to the worth of Marquis that, 
notwithstanding its quite recent crossing of the Inter- 
national Boundary Line, it should have already thoroughly 
established itself as the leading kind of wheat in the chief 
spring-wheat States, and that it should now be cultivated, 
to some extent at least, in a continuous zone of States 
stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The 
spring-wheat lands of Minnesota, the two Dakotas, and 
Montana pass by insensible gradations into the Canadian 
spring-wheat Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and 

32 Much Durum wheat is ground into flour at Minneapolis, and the 
flour, after being mixed with other sorts of flour, is used for 
making bread. 



ITO ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Alberta. In this vast territory, in the spring of 1918, 
Canadian and American farmers sowed Marquis upon 
about 20,000,000 acres ; and, if one were to travel in sum- 
mertime from the most southerly point in E'ebraska where 
Marquis is grown, due northwards, through South Dakota 
and ]fS[orth Dakota, to the most northerly point in Sas- 
katchewan where Marquis is grown, one would pass fields 
of Marquis for a distance of 800 miles. When one reflects 
that the thousands of millions of Marquis wheat-plants 
which turned from green to gold under the summer sun 
of this year, 1918, all had their origin in a single grain 
of wheat planted at Ottawa so recently as the spring of 
1903, one cannot help feeling that one is here presented 
with one of the most extraordinary examples of vegetable 
increase that our planet has ever seen. This increase, 
which is probably a record for Flowering Plants, has been 
made possible: firstly, by the wonderful means of com- 
munication and transportation which are now everywhere 
available and, secondly, by the highly advantageous co- 
operation of the cerealists, seedsmen, grain merchants, 
millers, and farmers of two friendly nations. There are 
no more pleasant and mutually profitable invasions than 
those which are accomplished by battalions of wheat-plants 
from the l^orth, and battalions of corn-plants from the 
South. May this delightful warfare long continue ! 

YIII. General Description of Marquis 

Marquis is one of the hard red spring wheats and is 
classed among the beardless varieties, although, in common 
with Eed Fife, White Fife, Glyndon, Haynes' Bluestem, 
etc., it carries a few short awns at the tip of the head. 
The head is of medium length and somewhat pointed at the 
tip. The chaff is smooth and of a straw-yellow color. 
The straw is somewhat shorter and less liable to lodge than 



m 


# # « 


• ^ 


m^m 


m 


m^ 


m 


« # 


m 


m' 


m 


# • 


m 


••^ 



Fig. 31. Cross-sections of Wheat Kernels. Marquis compared with Min- 
nesota standard varieties. A, Minnesota No. 169 or Haynes' Blnestem; 
B, Marquis; C, Minnesota No. 163 or Glyndon Fife; D, Velvet Chaff (Pres- 
ton). Three times natural size. From Bulletin No. 137 on Marquis Wheat 
by A. C. Amy and C. H. Bailey. Courtesy of the United States Department 
of Agriculture. 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT ITI 

that of most other varieties. The kernels are rather 
short, very plump, and of a particularly rich red color, 
qualities which make the wheat pleasing to the eye and 
admirable for exhibition purposes. The flour produced 
in the mill is of a pale cream-yellow color, similar to that 
of the old standard varieties. Red Fife and Bluestem ; and, 
for the production of loaves of large volume, it is fully 
equal to, if not better than, that of the older sorts. 

Messrs. Ball and Clark, of the Office of Cereal Investiga- 
tions at Washington, have described Marquis, as grovm 
in the United States, as follows : 

" In all important characters Marquis closely resembles 
the wheats of the Fife group, so commonly grown in the 
northern Great Plains States. It is therefore included 
in the Fife group. It will be remembered that the Red 
Fife was the male parent of Marquis and that it doubt- 
less was selected for Fife characters. 

" The Marquis is a beardless spring wheat, with white 
glabrous glumes and broad and short hard red kernels. 
In general it differs from the true Fife varieties in its 
shorter straw, shorter spike, shorter glumes, and shorter, 
broader kernel. 

"The plants are of only medium height, ranging from 
28 to 48 inches, according to season. They generally are 
2 to 4 inches shorter than those of the Glyndon and 
Power wheats. The straw is stiff and stands up well 
under unfavorable weather conditions. The spikes are 
short, varying from 2.5 to 4 inches in length. They aver- 
age one-half to 1 inch shorter than those of other varieties 
of the Fife group. Two or three awns usually are found 
at the tip of the head, as in other beardless wheats. 

" The glumes of the Marquis variety are short and 
broad. The variety usually can be recognized, even before 
the seed is ripe, by this character and by its lower stature. 



1T2 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

In spite of the short glumes the seed is held firmly and 
does not shatter. 

" The kernels of other Fife wheats are short and broad, 
bnt those of the Marqnis are even more so. They vary 
from 4.5 to 6 millimeters in length, averaging 5.2 milli- 
meters, or nearly 1 millimeter shorter than the kernels 
of Fife and Blnestem wheats. The crease also is broader 
and deeper. 

" The Marquis is an early variety, ripening from 98 
to 135 days after sowing, varying with the season and 
locality. The average length of its growing period in 
the northern Great Plains is about 115 days. This makes 
it three or four days earlier than most of the other Eife 
varieties. Because of its earliness it escapes to some 
extent the drought of dry years, the rust and fall rains of 
wet seasons, and also the early fall frosts. These are 
the characters which have made it especially valuable in 
the Prairie Provinces of Canada. 

" The growing season lengthens as one passes south- 
ward into the United States, and earliness is no longer 
so great an advantage." ^^ 

IX. Prizes Awarded to Marquis 

The late James J. Hill, of the Great l^orthern Eailway 
Company, offered a gold cup to the value of $1,000 for the 
best bushel of hard spring wheat grown in the United 
States. Sir Thomas Shaughnessy challenged him to open 
the competition for the prize to Canada, but Mr. Hill was 
unwilling to do this. Sir Thomas, therefore, on behalf 
of the Canadian Pacific Eailway Company, offered a new 
prize of $1,000 in gold for the best bushel of hard spring 

33 C. E,. Ball and J. A. Clark, Experiments with Marquis Wheat, 
Bulletin No. 400, United States Department of Agriculture, Wash- 
ington, 1916, pp. 4-6. 



DISCOVEKY OF MAKQUIS WHEAT 1T3 

wheat grown on the continent of ]^orth America. In 
1911 the international competition was held under the 
auspices of the [N'ew York Land Show and the prize was 
won by Mr. Seager Wheeler of Rosthern, Saskatchewan.^* 

Mr. Seager Wheeler, to whose Bed Bohs further refer- 
ence will be made in a later section, won the international 
prize in 1911 with a sample of Marquis wheat. From 5 
lbs. of seed sent to him by Dr. Saunders from Ottawa in 
1910, he obtained 250 lbs. of wheat and two sheaves which 
were not threshed but which were estimated to contain 
at least 5 lbs. of grain each. This extraordinary yield 
was obtained on a strip of land measuring 15 by 155 feet, 
equal to about one-nineteenth of an acre and probably con- 
stitutes a world's record for spring wheat.^^ The crop 
from the plot furnished part of the seed with which Mr. 
Wheeler won his first prize. 

In 1912, Mr. Holmes of Eaymond, Alberta, won the 
international prize, the competition being held under the 
auspices of the International Dry-farming Congress ; and 
a similar honor came to Mr. Paul Garlach of Allan, 
Saskatchewan, in 1913. In both these competitions it 
was Marquis which brought success. 

In 1914 and 1915 Mr. Seager Wheeler again won the 
international prize with Marquis wheat; and in 1916 he 
repeated his success; but this time he showed his new 
variety which he selected from Marquis and which he 
has called Kitchener, 

In the competition held in 1917 at the Twelfth Inter- 

34 I am indebted to the Grain Growers Guide for the above par- 
ticulars and for the names of the winners of the international 
prize. 

35 For the facts concerning Mr. Wheeler's achievement, see the 
Report of the Dominion Cerealist in the Annual Report on Ex- 
perimental Farms for 1911-12, Ottawa, 1913, p. 119. A calcula- 
tion shows that the yield per acre was 81 bushels. 



174: ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

national Soil Products Exposition, the international prize 
was again won with Marquis; and the winner was Mr. 
Samuel Larcombe of Birtle, Manitoba. 

In the most recent competition, held in October of the 
present year, 1918, under the auspices of the Thirteenth 
International Soil Products Exposition at Kansas City, 
Mr. Wheeler was again the successful competitor. He 
showed samples both of Marquis and Eed Bobs. Unfor- 
tunately, owing to some misunderstanding, no exact record 
was made as to which of these two varieties won the prize. 
Attempts made by the author to clear up this uncertainty 
have proved abortive. Owing to his having won the In- 
ternational prize ^Ye times, Mr. Seager Wheeler's name 
has been brought prominently before the public as that of 
one of the most successful grain growers on this con- 
tinent. 

Erom the above, we can draw the interesting conclusion 
that Marquis, or a derivative of Marquis, has won the in- 
ternational prize for a sample of the best hard spring wheat 
against all competitors from 1911 to 1917 inclusive, dur- 
ing a period of seven successive years. 

X. Long-Period Tests for Earliness and Yield 

To show the practical advantage of growing Marquis 
wheat in respect to earliness and yield, some exact data 
will be cited. In plot tests on summer fallow land at 
Indian Head, Saskatchewan, in a series of eleven years, 
1907-17 inclusive. Marquis showed an average increase 
of almost 40 per cent, over Red Eife and ripened its 
grains six days earlier than the older variety. ^^ In simi- 

36 This percentage is either in pounds weight or bushels. Sixty- 
pounds weight make one standard bushel of wheat according to 
law. The wheat is often weighed on the farm as it is being threshed 
and always weighed at the elevator when it is about to be stored; 



DISCOVERY OF MARQTJIS WHEAT 1T5 

lar tests at Brandon, Manitoba, for the series of ten 
years 1908-17 inclusive. Marquis had an advantage over 
Eed Fife of upwards of 20 per cent, and, just as at In- 
dian Head, was six days earlier in ripening.^'^ These 
facts may be set out in tabular form as follows : 

Indian Head: 1907-17 inclusive 
Days from Seeding to Ripening Yield in Ihs. per acre 

Marquis 122 3,084 

Eed Eife 128 2,210 

Brandon: 1908-17 inclusive 

Marquis 107 2,594 

Eed Eife 113 2,148 

The earliness of Marquis, as compared with Eed Fife, 
Bluestem, etc., brings with it a number of solid advan- 
tages ; and these we shall now proceed to discuss. 

XL Earliness and the Gain of Working-Time 

Owing to the fact that Marquis ripens its grains a full 
six days sooner than Eed Fife, the farmer who grows 
the former variety of wheat is given almost an extra 
week between harvest and freeze-up for the preparation 
of his land for the next year. In the Prairie Provinces, 

and the number of bushels is calculated from the weight in lbs. by 
dividing by 60. At an elevator, after the number of bushels of 
wheat in a delivery has been estimated in this way, the weight of 
the wheat contained in a bushel measure is foimd by testing a 
sample. If the weight should be less than 60 lbs., the grading is 
affected adversely. No. 1 Manitoba Hard and No. 1 Northern must 
weigh at least 60 lbs., and No. 2 Northern at least 58 lbs. Poor 
wheat may weigh as low as 55 lbs. to the measured bushel while 
good wheat often weighs 64 lbs. 

37 Yide Reports of Superintendents of Experimental Farms at 
Indian Head and Brandon, 1908 and following years. The data in the 
Tables were kindly compiled for the writer by the Dominion Cereal- 
ist. 



1T6 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

where at best only a few weeks intervene between tbe gath- 
ering of the crops and the hard frost of winter, the prac- 
tical advantage of the six-day gain is often very consider- 
able. 

XII. Earliness and 8torms 

The early ripening habit of Marquis is prized in Min- 
nesota, as well as in some other parts of the spring-wheat 
belt, because it lessens the time during which the standing 
crops must be exposed to the dangers of inclement weather. 
In that State, when it has become evident that there is 
going to be a fine yield and the wheat kernels are in the 
dough stage or ripening, and when it is yet a little too early 
to begin cutting, the sight of storm-clouds looming up upon 
the horizon makes the farmers very apprehensive ; for the 
heavier the stand and the greater the prospective yield, the 
greater is the danger of severe lodging by rain and wind, 
and of destruction by hail. Every day that the uncut 
grain is exposed in the fields, the risk of damage is 
lengthened ; and the harvesting of the crop a week sooner 
owing to the early ripening habit of Marquis, often pre- 
vents serious disaster. 

XIII. Earliness and Rust 

Another great advantage connected with earliness in 
Marquis is the diminished risk of loss from Black Stem 
Eust. The disease is caused by a parasitic fungus known 
as Puccinia graminis which settles in the form of micro- 
scopic spores upon the leaves and haulms of the wheat- 
plant, penetrates through the epidermis when the weather 
is moist and warm, appropriates for its own uses much of 
the sugar manufactured by the leaves, and thus inter-' 
feres with the passage of this important substance to the 
grains where normally it is destined to be converted into 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 177 

starch. When the fungus has been growing within the 
tissues of the wheat-plant for about a week, red powdery 
pustules break out, particularly upon the leaf-sheaths and 
stems. These may become gradually larger and more con- 
spicuouSj and their number may increase as the infec- 
tion spreads ; but, sooner or later, they pass away and are 
replaced by black pustules which persist on the straw 
through the winter. Both the red and the black pustules 
consist of spores which resemble in function the seeds of 
Flowering Plants, for they serve to reproduce the parasite 
and permit of its continuing its life-cycle. The action of 
the Rust-fungus upon the wheat-plant causes a greater 
or lesser shriveling of the grains. The consequence of 
an attack of Eust to the farmer, therefore, is a greater or 
lesser diminution of the yield of wheat at harvest time. 
E'ow, during the great Eust epidemic ^^ of 1916, it was 
observed in many localities that the fields of wheat which 
ripened earliest, suffered least from the disease. This is 
easily explicable if one realizes: that the Eust-fungus 
is a plant, that it therefore requires food for its growth, 
and that it naturally flourishes best in wheat-plants which 
are richest in sugars and proteins. When the fungus at- 
tacks a younger wheat-plant, with its grains only in the 
milk or in the dough stage, the straw is still rich in all those 
substances which enable the parasite to vegetate luxuri- 
antly, for these have not yet been transferred to the heads. 
On the other hand, when the fungus attacks an older 
wheat-plant, with its grains ripening, the straw is well ad- 
vanced toward exhaustion, for a considerable volume of 
its sugars and proteins has already passed up into the 
grains which in consequence have become partially filled. 

38 Plant pathologists in North America are now discarding the 
term epidemic as applied to plant diseases and are using the term 
epiphytotio instead. To avoid misunderstanding, I have not adopted 
this innovation here. 



ITS ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Whereas, therefore, the younger wheat-plant forms a 
highly suitable medium for the parasite, enabling it to 
flourish for a long time, the older one forms a relatively 
poor medium within which the growth of the parasite soon 
comes to an end. It follows from this, and from the fact 
that a Eust epidemic, when it comes at all, usually comes 
late in the growing season, that the earlier wheat is planted, 
the less likely is it to suffer severely from Black Stem 
Rust. But the hastening of the maturing process may be 
obtained by growing early-maturing varieties such as Mar- 
quis, In 1916, where Marquis and Red ~Fiie were sown 
at the same time, Marquis withstood the attack of the 
Rust disease far better than Red Fife owing to its six- 
day earlier ripening habit. This was noted, for example, 
in the plot tests at the University of Saskatchewan at 
Saskatoon by Professor John Bracken who, in his Lessons 
from the Bust Epidemic of 1916 _, recommends the planting 
of early-maturing varieties of wheat as one means of com- 
bating the Rust disease.^^ 

Marquis, while to a certain extent rust-escaping owing 
to its earliness, is not rust-resistant. If it could be made 
rust-resistant by replacing its rust-susceptible character by 
a rust-resistant one (much in the same way as one may 
remove a single bad brick from a building and replace it by 
a sound one), it would be considerably improved. Possi- 
bly, some day, our farmers may be provided with a wheat 
as good as Marquis which resists most of the fungus dis- 
eases which now diminish the yield, such as Rust, Smut, 
Wheat Scab, and Root-rots. In any case, a serious at- 
tempt must be made to breed such an ideal plant, however 
long and difficult may be the task. Already in England, 

39 J. Bracken, Lessons from the Rust Epidemic of 1916, Bull. 
No, 50, Dept. of Agriculture for Saskatchewan, Regina, 1917, pp. 
11, 15. 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 1^9 

the yearly toll taken by Yellow Stripe Bust (a disease not 
occurring in Canada) has been reduced by the breeding of 
a rust-resistant wheat by Professor R. H. Biffen of Cam- 
bridge University. The new wheat is called Little Joss 
and originated from a cross between the rust-susceptible 
Square Head's Master, one of the most widely cultivated 
English wheats, and a rust-resisting Ghurka wheat from 
Eussia.^^ Professor Biff en's success in obtaining Little 
Joss was largely due to the fact that his efforts were guided 
by the light of Mendel's principles of inheritance. These 
celebrated principles were working out from a study of the 
effects of crossing varieties of the Eating Pea, in a cloister 
garden, by Gregor Mendel, a monk, in 1873 ; and their ap- 
plication by Professor Biffen in the task of producing a 
rust-resistant wheat suited to English soil, affords an- 
other remarkable instance of the way in which Pure Sci- 
ence provides Applied Science with her tools. The latest 
report shows that Biffen's rust-resistant Little Joss is now 
the chief wheat grown in the Eastern Counties of Eng- 
land, that it is spreading rapidly over other parts of the 
country, and that owing to its resistance to Yellow Stripe 
Rust which attacks other wheats year after year, it has a 
yield of 40 bushels to the acre instead of 36 as given by 
Square Head's Master, as the average for a seven-year 
period in test plots.^^ These significant facts have been 
noted both in the ITnited States and in Canada. At the 
present time. Professor Stakman, Dr. Hayes and others 
at the University of Minnesota are engaged in a campaign 
to breed first-class bread-wheats which are resistant to 
Black Stem Rust ; and, at the University of Saskatchewan, 

40 R. H. Biffen, Systematized Plant-Breeding, an essay in Science 
mid the Nation, edited by A. C. Seward, Cambridge, 1917, p. 157. 

^^lUd., pp. 157, 158. Each bushel was 63 lbs. On farms, away 
from the Experimental Station, Little Joss yielded 5 to 10 per cent, 
per season more than Square Head's Master. 



180 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Professor W. P. Thompson is studying the problem of 
rnst-resistance with a view to a solution of it for this 
country in the near or distant future. Up to the present, 
however, the greatest contribution to the task of combating 
Eust in Canada has been made by Dr. Saunders through 
the introduction of early-maturing Marquis wheat. The 
losses to the wheat crop through Black Stem Eust in the 
year 1916 were about 100,000,000 bushels in Canada ^^ 
and 140,000,000 in the United States ;43 and, doubtless, 
they would have been considerably greater, had not Mar- 
quis with its early ripening habit already by that time so 
largely supplanted later-maturing varieties such as Red 
Fife and Bluestem.^* 

XIY. Earliness and Frost 

Owing to its earliness. Marquis is less liable than Eed 
Fife, etc., to be injured by early frosts in the colder sec- 
tions of the wheat-growing area. In the greater part 
of the southern and central prairie region of Alberta, 
Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, the first destructive frost 
usually occurs between September 6 and September 12. 
In this region, Marquis, and usually also Red Fife, ripen 
their grains sufiiciently early to escape this frost. Fur- 
ther north, the first destructive frost frequently occurs 
from August 2Y to September 2. In this region. Marquis 
usually ripens early enough to escape the frost, but Red 
Fife often suffers from it very severely. Still further 
to the north, and in less favored districts, the first de- 
structive frost comes from August 20 to August 26. This 

42 Estimate made by the writer from a study of data collected 
by the Secretary of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. 

43 Estimate kindly sent to the writer in a letter by M. A, Carle- 
ton, cerealist for the U. S. Department of Agriculture. 

44 Bluestem ripens later than Eed Fife, and is therefore very 
little grown in Canada, though well known in the U. S. A. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 181 

very early coming on of cold weather usually prevents Eed 
Fife from ripening at all, and even seriously affects 
Marquis. 

There can be no question that the early-ripening habit 
of Marquis is a most valuable character so far as escap- 
ing early frosts is concerned, and that it has already 
brought about in Canada a saving of great quantities of 
wheat which in its absence would have been spoiled. 

The farther north man makes his abode and seeks his 
sustenance, the more necessary is it for him to grow 
early-maturing wheats. Dr. William Saunders, many 
years ago, introduced Ladoga, which ripens about ten days 
earlier than Red Eife, into the Peace Eiver valley. At 
Dunvegan and at Fort Vermilion, 414 miles and 591 
miles by latitude due north of Winnipeg respectively, this 
wheat has been raised in good condition, so that it weighed 
per bushel 64 lbs. at the former place and 60 lbs. at the 
latter. Mr. J. M. Macoun, after making investigations 
on the spot, reported that in 1903 about Y,500 bushels of 
wheat had been raised in the neighborhood of Vermilion 
and that one of the settlers there had obtained 40 bushels 
per acre from 50 acres. Even at Fort Simpson, which is 
situated on the Mackenzie River, 818 miles by latitude 
north of Winnipeg and only 324 miles south of the Arctic 
Circle, the early-maturing Ladoga has been successfully 
raised, so that it weighed 62^^ lbs. to the bushel. In this 
instance, however, a small percentage of the grain was in- 
jured by frost. *^ 

45 Experimental Farms Report for 1903, p. 11. The Hudson's Bay 
Company long had a roller mill at Vermilion. In 1903 it had a 
capacity of 20 barrels a day. At that time the Company was giv- 
ing $1.50 per bushel for all wheat grown in the vicinity with the 
object of supplying all their northern posts with Vermilion flour. 
Recently Vermilion became connected with Edmonton by means of 
the Edmonton, Dunvegan, and British Columbia Railway and by 
steamship service. Flour is now taken northwards to Vermilion 



182 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

The nearer one approaches to the Arctic Circle in sum- 
mer, the longer are the days and, other things being 
equal, the greater- is the amount of light to which wheat- 
plants are subjected during the growing season. Dr. Wil- 
liam Saunders found that the same kind of wheat grown 
at Ottawa took on an average of three years 106 days 
to ripen but grown at Vermilion only 101 days, and he 
ascribed this difference to the difference in the amount 
of sunlight in the two places. It is possible, however, 
that differences in the amount of available moisture and 
heat were also important factors in bringing about the 
result. In support of his view Dr. William Saunders 
recalled the work of a Russian investigator named Ko- 
walewski. Kowalewski grew spring wheat and oats in 
different parts of Eussia, from the north at Arkangelsk to 
the southern province of Kherson, and made careful ob- 
servations on the time of ripening. He found that in 
higher latitudes the grain ripens in a shorter period than 
in the more southern districts, the difference varying at 
different points from 12 to 35 days. Kowalewski at- 
tributed the earlier ripening in the north largely to the 
influence of light during the long summer days, but he 
also believed that the short seasons of quick growth had 
brought about in these cereals an early-ripening habit. 
Dr. William Saunders, however, regarded this habit as a 
fijxed one which cereals continue to manifest when grown 
in localities where the summer season is longer.*^ What- 
ever may be the exact reason for the hastening of the 
maturation of one and the same spring wheat when grown 
in higher latitudes, the fact remains that this hasten- 
ing must be of distinct advantage in lessening the danger 
from early frosts. 

by this route and the Hudson's Bay Company, in consequence, has 
ceased to operate its Vermilion mill. 
46 Ihid. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 183 

At Fort Vermilion, in 1909, 36,000 bushels of wheat 
were grown with an average yield of 24 bushels per acre. 
The wheat varieties with which this success was obtained 
were all more or less early ones and included Ladoga, 
Preston, Early Riga, and Eiga.^"^ 

In the spring of 1917, 9,000 bushels of wheat were 
shipped from Fort Vermilion to Fort William by Mr. 
Sheridan Lawrence from his own farm. The wheat was 
transported upon the steamship D. A. Thomas 280 
miles up the Peace River, then 311 by the Edmonton, 
Dunvegan and British Columbia Railway to Edmonton, 
and finally 1,446 miles by rail from Edmonton to Fort 
William, the total distance being 2,037 miles. The long 
haul and high freight rates were overcome by the high 
price for wheat prevailing at that time. This, however, 
is not a normal condition and, until railway facilities are 
provided for shipping the grain, the Fort Vermilion dis- 
trict must find its markets nearer home. Upon his farm 
Mr. Sheridan Lawrence has operated a stone flour mill 
for over twenty years and recently has had a roller mill 
installed.^* These facts indicate some of the possibili-. 
ties of the E'orthland. 

XV. Marquis, Euby, avd Prelude 

To meet the exigencies due to short seasons in the 
northern parts of the Prairie Provinces, Dr. Saunders has 
striven to produce new kinds of wheat which, in addition 
to having a high yield and the excellent baking and milling 
qualities of Marquis, ripen even earlier than this variety. 
One of these wheats, an approximation to his ideal, which 

47 Experimental Farms Reports for 1909, p. 7. 

48 F. H. Kitto, The Peace River District, its Resources and Oppor- 
tunities, Department of the Interior, Natural Resources Intelligence 
Branch, Ottawa, 1918, p. 41. 



184 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

was introduced a few years ago and is being successfully 
grown in various districts where the season is short, he has 
called Prelude ^^ .hecavise it ripens at the very beginning 
of the wheat harvest, some two weeks sooner than Marquis. 
With the coming into existence of such wheats as Marquis 
and Prelude, it has been made possible to extend the profit- 
able wheat-growing area of Canada much farther toward 
the !N'orth where the seasons are shorter. It may be added 
that the name Prelude naturally suggested itself to Dr. 
Saunders as appropriate owing to his love of music. Pre- 
lude is a musical term for a preliminary air.^^ 

The breeding of Prelude has by no means ended the 
attempts of Dr. Saunders to develop varieties of wheat 
suited to the short seasons of the North. Plis most recent 
introduction he has called Ruhy Wheat on account of the 
reddish hue of its ripe kernels. As compared with Pre- 

49 C. E. Saunders, Prelude Wheat, Experimental Farms Reports for 
1911-12, Ottawa, 1913, pp. 117-118. 

50 The particular districts for which Prelude is recommended are 
Northern Saskatchewan and Northern and Central Alberta; and it 
is in these that this variety of wheat ripens two weeks earlier than 
Marquis. There is less difference in the time of ripening in districts 
where the summer is warmer. Prelude is now grown, sometimes on 
a considerable scale, at rather high altitudes in Alberta and at 
northern latitudes in Saskatchewan. It has been ripened in Dawson 
City in the Yukon. At present it is impossible to say with certainty 
how much farther North one variety can be grown than another, 
owing to the incompleteness of the tests which have been made 
hitherto. In attempting to make comparisons, the variation in the 
seasons becomes a complicating factor. Even late-maturing wheats 
can be grown in favorable spots and in favorable seasons in high 
latitudes, although such successes do not by any means represent 
the average for a number of consecutive seasons. Thus Red Fife 
sometimes ripens on the farm where tests are made for the Domin- 
ion Government at Fort Vermilion on the Peace River, 650 miles north 
of the International Boundary-line; but this is quite exceptional, 
and Red Fife is not at all suitable for the Peace River coimtry as a 
whole, year in and year out. Marquis and other early-maturing 
wheats do much better in this far distant region of the North. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 185 

lude, Ruby does not shatter so readily, lias longer straw, 
has a larger yield, is beardless instead of being bearded, 
but is a few days later in ripening its grains. It is now 
being rapidly tested in the West. It may supplant Pre- 
lude to a greater or lesser degree but is not expected to 
replace Marquis in those more southerly districts where 
the latter does so well. 

Marquis ripens about one week earlier than Eed Eife, 
Euby about two weeks and a half earlier, and Prelude 
more than three weeks earlier. ^^ The length of straw and 
the yield vary inversely as the earliness. Thus Prelude, 
the earliest of the three wheats, has the shortest straw and 
the least yield ; Euby, which is intermediate in earliness, 
has straw of intermediate length and has an intermediate 
yield; while Marquis, the least early of the three wheats, 
has the longest straw and the best yield. 

It is evidently not an easy matter to combine extreme 
earliness with a very high yield; and this is not surpris- 
ing, for the earlier a wheat is, the shorter is its growing 
period, and the less is the time at its disposal for manu- 
facturing the starch and proteins which are required to 
fill the grains. Other things being equal, extreme earli- 
ness and high yield are mutually antagonistic qualities. 
It is unthinkable that wheat should ever be introduced 
which would ripen in seventy days and yield from thirty 
to fifty bushels per acre, nor does it seem at all likely 
that cereal breeders will ever succeed in producing a wheat 
which combines the extreme earliness of Prelude with the 
very high productivity of Marquis. Beyond a certain 
point increased earliness can only be selected at the ex- 
pense of high yield, and vice versa. 

51 At the Indian Head Experimental Farm, in 1918, Ruby was sev- 
eral days earlier in ripening than Mr. Seager Wheeler's Red Bobs. 
Observations of the Superintendent of the Farm and of the author. 



186 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Marquis, Ruby and Prelude were all produced by cross- 
breeding. Marquis resulted from a single cross, Huby 
from two successive crosses, and Prelude from three suc- 
cessive crosses. Their respective genealogical trees may 
be represented as follows : 

Parentage of Marquis 
Hard Red Calcutta (f.) X Red Fife (m.) A. P. Saunders, 1892 

\ / 

Marquis 

Parentage of Ruby 

Gehun (f.) X Onega (m.) W. T. Maeoun, 1891 

\ / 

Downy Riga (f.) X I^ed Fife (m.) C. E. Saunders, 1905 

\ / 

Ruby 

Parentage of Prelude ^2 
Ladoga (f.) X White Fife (m.) A. P. Saunders, 1888 

\ / 

Alpha (f.) X Hard Red Calcutta (m.) . . A. P. Saunders, 1892 

\ / 

Fraser (m.) X (downy) Gehun (f.) . C. E. Saunders, 1903 

\ / 

Prelude 

Hard Red Calcutta and Gehun were brought to Canada 
from India, and Ladoga and Onega from northern Russia. 
Red Fife came from central Europe (probably Galicia) 
vm the ports of Danzig and Glasgow; and White Pife is 
believed to be one of its derivatives.-^^ Marquis, Ruby, 

52 C. E. Saunders, Experimental Farm Reports for 1911-12, Ot- 
tawa, 1913, p. 118. 

53 W. Saunders, Ladoga Wheat, Central Experimental Farm, Bul- 
letin No. 4, 1889, p. 4; also C. E. Saunders, Evidence before the 
Select Standing Committee on Agi'iculture and Colonization. Ot- 
tawa, 1905. 

Red Fife is named after David Fife upon whose farm Red Fife orig- 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 187 

and Prelude have therefore had a somewhat complex 
origin. However, each of them, in a greater or lesser de- 
gree, embodies the earliness of its Indian or Russian an- 
cestors with the good milling and baking qualities of 
Canadian Eed Fife or White Fife. The production of 
such cross-bred wheats to meet the requirements of agri- 
culture is one of the most remarkable developments of 
modern botany. 

XVI. The Advance Toward the North of the Belts of 
Wheat and Corn 

The pushing up of the wheat-belt in Canada toward 
the ^N'orth, owing to the discovery and introduction of 
new early-maturing varieties, finds an interesting parallel 
in the northerly advance of the belt of Indian com in the 
United States. The original corn-belt was situated in 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and ITebraska; but now 
corn culture is undertaken on a considerable scale in Min- 
nesota, South Dakota, and l^orth Dakota. The northerly 
extension of the corn-belt by several hundreds of miles 
was accomplished by the introduction of new varieties of 
corn with early-ripening characteristics, two of the chief 
ones being known as Minnesota No. 13 and Minnesota 
No. 23. The former is a uniform Yellow Dent, and the 
latter a white-capped Yellow Dent. Minnesota ^o. 13 
was discovered by Professor Andrew Boss of the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota. Professor Boss in 1890 obtained 
two bushels of Yellow Dent from De Cow and Company, 
seedsmen of St. Paul, planted the grains at the University 

inated in 1841 from a sample of wheat which was obtained by a friend 
from a cargo of wheat which had arrived at the port of Glasgow 
from Danzig on the Baltic coast. Dr. C. E. Saunders has shown 
that it is identical with a wheat still grown in Galicia. Tide 
Section XXIII on The Origin of Bed Fife. 



188 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Farm, and made selections for earliness. He thus origin- 
ated a strain which became known as Minnesota No. IS 
and which, instead of taking 120 to 125 days to ripen like 
the Yellow Dent variety then most grown, matured in 
from 100 to 110 days. The development of Minnesota 
^o. 13 made it possible to grow corn much farther north- 
ward from the southern boundary of Minnesota than had 
previously been the case. But another great step in the 
pushing northward of the corn-belt was soon to follow 
through the introduction of Minnesota No, 23, which was 
even more remarkable than Minnesota l^o. 13 in its early- 
maturing properties. Minnesota l^o. 23 was discovered 
by Professor Boss on a farm at Mentor, near Hendrum, 
in E'orman County, Minnesota, only 120 miles south of 
the International Boundary-line. It was being grown by 
■a farmer named Jacob Berg, but how it came into his 
possession is not known. Professor Boss noticed its un- 
usual earliness, obtained a sample of it in 1893, and 
propagated it at the Minnesota Experimental Station. A 
selection of it, made by Professor C. P. Bull in 1905, was 
increased in quantity and finally distributed as seed. The 
new Minnesota No. 23 was found to ripen in the very brief 
period of about 90 days, and this led to its being grown 
as far north as the upper boundary of Minnesota and 
in North Dakota. ^^ Just as the profitable corn-belt in 
North America was thus pushed northwards in two steps 
by the successive introduction of Yellow Dent Minnesota 
No. 13 and Yellow Dent Minnesota No. 23, so, too, in more 
recent years, has the profitable wheat-belt been pushed 
northwards by the successive introduction of Marquis and 
Prelude. 

The northward advance of the corn-belt has made a 

54 The facts in this paragraph concerning corn were kindly sup- 
plied by Professor Boss. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 189 

profound difference to Minnesota, for in that State about 
25 years ago a farmer was considered a gambler who at- 
tempted to grow Dent Corn north of the southern third of 
the State (above the so-called St. Cloud Line) ; but now all 
this is changed, for there is actually more corn raised to- 
day in Kittson, the north-west corner county of Minnesota, 
'than used to be raised a generation ago at Houston, the 
south-east corner county of the State. ^^ At the present 
time, when one travels through Minnesota by rail in the 
summer, one observes scattered everywhere, from north to 
south and from east to west, rich fields of dark-greem 
corn; and silos for the fermentation and storing of corn 
ensilage for feeding stock have become a characteristic 
feature of the landscape. ^^ further evidence of the ag- 
ricultural importance of the early-ripening Yellow Dent 
varieties is afforded by the fact that Minnesota in 1917 
produced 90,000,000 bushels of corn and ^orth Dakota 
in 1916, 13,500,000 bushels.^^ Manitoba is not within 
the corn-belt, for corn, as a rule, does not ripen in 
that Province owing to the shortness of the growing sea- 
son. ]^evertheless, when corn is sown in the warmer 
districts about the middle of May, it grows rapidly during 
the long bright days, attains a height of from 6 to 8 
feet, and yields often as much as 10 to 15 tons of green 
fodder to the acre. This is made into ensilage or stocked 
in the fields until required for feeding. '^^ It proves to 

55 Communicated by Professor Boss. 

56 Ensilage is the most economical method of treating corn for 
feeding animals. Both stalks and green leaves are run through 
the cutter. After fermentation the ensilage can be kept with safety 
all through the winter. 

57 Year Book of the U. S. Department of Agriculture for 1917, p. 
608. 

5s Cf. A Handbook to Winnipeg and the Province of Manitoba, 
prepared for the Winnipeg meeting of the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, article on Agriculture by R. P. Roblin 
and W. J. Black, 1909, Winnipeg, pp. 72, 73. 



190 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

be excellent for fattening cattle and is one of the best 
foods for milch cows. The pushing northward of the 
corn-belt has therefore directly affected agriculture in the 
Prairie Provinces. The story of the northward advance 
of the corn-belt seems to warrant the belief that eventually 
vast tracts of land in northern Canada which have not yet 
been plowed, will one day be made to raise early-ripening 
varieties of wheat such as those which Dr. Saunders is 
now perfecting. ^^ 

XVII. TJie Yield of Marquis in Western Canada 

In the greater part of Saskatchewan, on summer fallow, 
one is safe in saying that the yield of Marquis over Red 
Pife is at least 20 per cent. The situation in Central and 
i^orthem Manitoba is about the same as in Saskatchewan. 
In Alberta the climatic conditions are more complex than 
in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, so that for that province it 
is difficult to make exact statements of the yield of Marquis 
compared with that of other varieties. 

On stuhhle land Marquis often appears to be no better 
than, or about the same as, Red Pife, provided that the 

59 In Manitoba, the chief variety of corn now grown is North- 
western Dent, the next variety in importance being Minnesota No. 
13. The cobs ripen in this Province only in exceptional seasons. In 
1914, when the mean shade temperature for July was 70° F., the cobs 
of certain Flint varieties (Quebec No. 28 and Free Press) ripened 
well, while the cobs of the Dent varieties ripened only partially. 
There are about 100 silos in Manitoba. Information supplied by 
Mr. Allan Campbell at the Brandon Experimental Farm. 

Northwestern Dent is a variety of Red Dent corn that is not re- 
lated in any way to either Minnesota No. 13 or Minnesota No. 23. 
It has been grown to a considerable extent in the two Dakotas, 
Montana, and Minnesota, and to some extent in northern Michigan 
and Wisconsin. There is no authentic history of this variety, and 
no one appears to know where or how it originated. Information 
supplied by Professor Andrew Boss of the University of Minnesota. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 191 

season is long enough to ripen both sorts. Where the sea- 
son is very short, Marquis, even on stubble, etc., has the 
advantage because it ripens its grains earlier than Eed 
Fife. 

The yield of Marquis in the field in western Canada is 
often very high and a few of the more noteworthy crops 
may be mentioned. In 1909 a field of 4% acres at Bran- 
don gave 52/4 bushels per acre. In 1910 a field of 5/^ 
acres at Indian Head gave a little over 53 bushels per 
acre. But these records were surpassed in 1911 at the 
Experimental Station at Eosthern, Saskatchewan, when a 
/4o-acre plot yielded at the rate of 70 bushels per acre. 
It was in this same year that Mr. Seager Wheeler ^^ on 
a M.9-acre plot at Eosthern, obtained a yield at the rate 
of 81 bushels per acre.^^ 

Mr. C. S. JN^oble, who is operating a 15,000-^acre farm 
in Alberta, purchased a limited supply of Mr. Seager 
Wheeler's registered Marquis seed wheat in 1913. From 
this, by propagation, he obtained a sufiicicnt supply of 
grain to seed 1,000 acres in 1916. From this 1,000-acre 

60 For all of the above data vide Report of the Dominion Cereal- 
ist in Report on Experimental Farms for 1911-12, Ottawa, 1912, 
p. 119. The nature of Mr. Wheeler's plot and yield is given in 
Section IX on Prizes aiuarded to Marquis. The field crops cited 
for Brandon and Indian Head excelled the plot records at both 
the Brandon and Indian Head Experimental Farms. 

61 Record Yield of Wheat — According to the United States 
Monthly Crop Report of July, 1918, the largest yield per acre of 
wheat ever recorded is, so far as ascertained by the Bureau of Crop 
Estimates, 117.2 bushels. It was produced in 1895 in Island County, 
Washington, on a field of 18 acres. The farm on which this crop 
was grown consisted of a clearing of 85 acres of black sandy loam 
with a clay subsoil. It has been farmed for over 30 years, is not 
irrigated, but is well diversified. No fertilizer has ever been used 
on this farm. The variety of wheat sown was Australian Club. 
The field that produced the record yield was in pasture for cattle 
and sheep for several years, and for three years prior to producing 
the yield of wheat was seeded to potatoes. 



192 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

field he threshed 54^395 bushels of wheat which gives a 
rate of 54% bushels per acre.^^ 

XYIII. The Yield of Marquis in the United States 

The yield of Marquis in the United States has been care- 
fully studied by a number of observers. The first Bulletin 
dealing with this subject was published by Professor A. 
C. Amy of the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Sta- 
tion early in 1914,^^ and another by Messrs. C. E. Ball 
and J. A, Clark in 1916.^^ In the more recent Bulletin, 
which is very comprehensive, reports on yield have been 
brought together from 23 stations scattered in 13 differ- 
ent States. The area of observation stretched from Iowa 
and Minnesota on the east to California and Oregon on 
the west, and included all the intervening States except 
Washington. In this great expanse of territory, the con- 
ditions of climate and soil vary greatly; and it was only 
to be expected that the relative yield of Marquis would 
vary considerably with local conditions. Messrs. Ball 
and Clark concluded from their data which provided yields 
for three years, that, in the Northern Prairie States and 
in the Great Plains area. Marquis gives a higher yield than 
other Common spring wheats but that, west of the Rocky 
Mountains, it is outyielded by the standard varieties of 
soft white spring wheat and by several newly introduced 
varieties. They also found that, under irrigation. Mar- 
quis had done fairly well in limited experiments east of 
the Eocky Mountains but not at two stations to the west 

62 Better Seed Book, The Grain Growers' Guide, Winnipeg, 1917- 
18, p. 4. 

63 A. C. Arny, Marquis Wheat ; I, History and Culture, Minne- 
sota Wheat Investigations, Bulletin No. 137, Series II, Feb., 1914. 

64 C. E. Ball and J. A. Clark, Experiments with Marquis Wheat, 
Bulletin No. 400, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of 
Agriculture, Oct., 1916, pp. 1-40. 



DISCOVEKY OF MAKQUIS WHEAT 



193 



of this range. In what follows we shall concern ourselves 
solely with the States of Minnesota, North Dakota, South 
Dakota, and Montana, where most of the spring wheat is 
grown. 

In the great spring-wheat region of the United States, 
Marquis gives an excellent yield, as is evident from the 
following Table reproduced from a Monthly Crop Eeport 
recently published at Washington. ^^ The Table gives the 
estimated number of bushels per acre for each important 
variety of wheat in Minnesota and the two Dakotas in the 
years 1914, 1916, and 1917, and similar figures for Mon- 
tana in 1917. The data for the abnormally large crop 
year of 1915, unfortunately, are not included. Here 
again, Velvet Chaff is another name for Preston. 



Yield of Wheat Varieties 


in Bushels per 


Acre 






Mar- 
quis 


Velvet 
Chafif 


Blue- 
stem 


Durum 


Fife 


Winter 


Other 


MINNE- 
SOTA 
1917 

1916 

1914 

NOKTH 
DAKOTA 

1917 

1916 

1914 

SOUTH 
DAKOTA 

1917 

1916 

1914 

MON- 
TANA 

1917 


Bush. 

17.2 
11.0 

12.8 

8.0 

6.0 

14.9 

15.3 

7.9 

11.2 

9.3 


Bush. 

16.0 

7.4 
11.6 

7.5 

5.2 

12.1 

13.1 
6.2 
9.3 

7.5 


Bush. 

14.0 

5.5 
9.8 

7.2 

3.8 

10.3 

11.1 
5.0 

7.5 

6.5 


Bush. 

15.5 

8.5 

12.3 

9.0 

7.3 

13.9 

15.6 

8.2 

11.2 

9.0 


Bush. 

15.0 

6.9 

10.3 

7.0 

4.5 

10.9 

10.0 
5.0 
9.3 

7.5 


Bush. 

20.0 
14.0 
19.5 

8.5 
11.9 
13.7 

14.0 
18.5 
14.0 

12.5 


Bush. 
14.0 

11.0 

6.8 

5.0 

10.8 

8.7 
7.5 



«5 Monthly Crop Report, August, 1918, Washington, p. 95. 



194 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Wliile looking through the Table, the reader should bear 
in mind the relative contribution which each variety of 
wheat makes to the total crop. This has already been 
pointed out in a previous Section.^^ The reader will re- 
member that most of the wheat produced in the four chief 
spring-wheat States consists of spring varieties of Common 
Wheat, I e., Marquis, Velvet Chaff, Bluestem and Fife ; 
that Durum wheat in 1917 formed 25 per cent, of the total 
wheat crop in l^orth Dakota, 20 per cent, in South Da- 
kota, 8 per cent, in Montana, and 3 per cent, in Minne- 
sota; and that Winter wheat in 1917 formed 40 per cent, 
of the total crop in Montana, but only 3 per cent, in Minne- 
sota and South Dakota, and only 1 per cent, in 'North. 
Dakota. 

The most important conclusion to be drawn from the 
Table is that in each of the four great spring-wheat States, 
Minnesota, ISTorth Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, 
Marquis has outyielded every other spring variety of Com- 
man Wheat, i. e., Velvet Chaff, Bluestem, and Fife. Vel- 
vet Chaff was outyielded by from 0.5 to 3.6, Bluestem by 
0.8 to 5.5, and Eife by 1.0 to 5.3 bushels per acre. 

Marquis, on the average for all the years given in the 
Table and throughout the whole spring-wheat region of 
Minnesota, the two Dakotas, and Montana, has outvielded 
Velvet Chaff by 1.8, Fife by 2.7, and Bluestem by 3.3 
bushels per acre. 

It is not without interest to observe how Marquis has 
fared, on an average of three years, in each of the three 
chief spring-wheat States taken individually. 

In Minnesota, Marquis has outyielded Velvet Chaff by 
2, Fife by 2.9, and Bluestem by 3.9 bushels per acre. 

In 'North Dakota, Marquis lias outyielded Velvet Chaff 

86 Section VII on The Introduction of Marquis into the United 
States. 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 195 

by 1.4, Fife by 2.2, and Bluestem by 2.5 bushels per acre. 

In Soutb Dakota, Marquis has outyielded Velvet Chaff 
by 1.9, Fife by 3.7, and Bluestem by 3.6 bushels per acre. 

In Montana, where we have data for one year only, Mar- 
quis has outyielded Velvet Chaff by 1.8, Fife also by 1.8, 
and Bluestem by 2.8 bushels per acre. 

So far as Durum is concerned, Marquis has outyielded 
this variety in Minnesota by 1.6, and in Montana by 0.3 
bushels per acre; but Durum has outyielded Marquis in 
^orth Dakota by 0.4, and in South Dakota by 0.2 bushels 
per acre. 

Winter wheat, on the relatively few acres where it has 
been grown successfully, has outyielded Marquis in each 
of the four States : in Minnesota by 4.2, in ^orth Dakota 
by 1.7, in South Dakota by 4, and in Montana by 3.2 
bushels per acre. 

From the point of view of the three older spring varie- 
ties of Common Wheat, we can make the following state- 
ments : 

Bluestem was outyielded by Marquis : in Minnesota by 
3.9, in Il^orth Dakota by 2.5, in South Dakota by 3.6, and 
in Montana by 2.8 bushels per acre. In other words. Mar- 
quis outyielded Bluestem, on the average throughout the 
spring-wheat region, by from 2.5 to 3.9, or more exactly 
by 3.3 bushels per acre. 

Fife was outyielded by Marquis: in Minnesota by 2.9, 
in North Dakota by 2.2, in South Dakota by 3.7, and in 
Montana by 1.8 bushels per acre. In other words Marquis 
outyielded Fife, on the average throughout the spring- 
wheat region, by from 1.8 to 3.7, or more exactly by 2.7 
bushels per acre. 

Velvet Chaff was outyielded by Marquis : in Minnesota 
by 2, in North Dakota by 1.4, in South Dakota by 1.9, and 
in Montana by 1.8 bushels per acre. In other words, Mar- 



196 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

quis outyi elded Velvet Chaff, on tKe average throughout 
the spring- wheat region, by from 1.4: to 2, or more exactly 
by 1.8 bushels per acre. 

The superior productiveness of Marquis entails in- 
creased farm values of the wheat crop. A recognition of 
this fact, no doubt, has been largely responsible for the 
rapid rise of the new variety into favor with farmers dur- 
ing the past four years, and for the corresponding diminu- 
tion in the cultivation of Velvet Chaff, Bluestem, and Fife. 

In concluding this Section, we may compare the rela- 
tive yields of Marquis and Fife in the United States and 
Canada. It will be remembered that it was found in long- 
period tests that Marquis outyielded Red Fife : at Indian 
Head in Saskatchewan by almost 40 per cent., and at 
Brandon in Manitoba by over 20 per cent.^''' A calcula- 
tion made from the Table shows that, as an average for 
three years. Marquis outyielded Fife : in South Dakota by 
41 per cent., in !N'orth Dakota by 29 per cent., in Montana 
by 24 per cent., and in Minnesota by 13 per cent. It thus 
becomes obvious that the advantage of replacing Red Fife 
by Marquis is nearly equal in the two countries. 

XIX. TTie Favorable Grading of Marquis 

As a rule, but especially in unfavorable seasons, the 
increased yield of Marquis over Red Fife on summer 
fallow is associated with a higher weight per measured 
bushel and a greater plumpness of kernel. Consequently 
Marquis tends to obtain a higher grade than Red Fife. 
This often results in a considerable difference in price 
apart from the difference in yield. If, for instance, Red 
Fife were to produce 20 bushels to the acre grading IN'o. 4 
and Marquis 25 bushels grading ISTo. 2, the difference in 
value would be greater than 25 per cent, in favor of Mar- 

67 Vide Section X on Long-period Tests for Earliness and Yield. 



DISCOVEKY OF MAKQUIS WHEAT 19T 

quis by reason of the higher price paid for the higher 
grade. Of course the higher grading of Marquis rela- 
tively to the higher yield is but a small matter ; but sup- 
posing 80,000,000 bushels of Marquis, on account of 
higher grading, were to fetch on the average 3 cents per 
bushel more than a similar quantity of Red Fife, the gain 
due to the more favorable grading would be $2,400,000, 
a sum with a purchasing power by no means to be despised. 

XX. Resistance to Shelling 

Marquis does not shell, i. e., drop a certain proportion 
of its grains just before it is cut like Bluestem, Eed Fife, . 
Preston, and certain other kinds of wheat. But this ad- 
vantage which has been especially noted in IN'orth Dakota 
upon the windy prairie and in some parts of Saskatchewan, 
Alberta and Manitoba, brings with it a disadvantage, for 
Marquis requires extra power in threshing. A thresher 
must take care that his machine is accurately set^ otherwise 
much of the wheat may be lost as the straw is run through 
into the straw stack. The loss due to shelling in Bluestem 
in ISTorth Dakota often amounts to a bushel per acre and 
possibly more in years of rapid ripening. In some years, 
when Bluestem is harvested, the ground is littered with the 
grains shattered out of their glumes by the wind and the 
harvesting machinery. The amount of grain left upon 
the ground, and therefore irrecoverable, not infrequently 
appears to be equal to the amount originally used as seed.^^ 
Red Fife does not shell so badly as Bluestem but, never- 
theless, is far from equaling Marquis in the retention of 
its grains. Resistance to shelling by Marquis is undoubt- 
edly one of the several factors which favor a high yield 
from this variety of wheat. 

68 The facts concerning the shelling of Bluestem in North Dakota 
were kindly supplied to me by Professor H. L. Bolley. 



198 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

XXI. Milling and Baking Qualities 

It is very important that western Canada should con- 
tinue to raise wheat which, like Red Fife, possesses very 
high milling and baking qualities; for it is upon these 
qualities that the intrinsic value of wheat chiefly depends. 
The grading of wheat for sale is based as closely as pos- 
sible upon the value that the cereal will have for the miller 
and the baker; and those wheats which most nearly ap- 
proach their ideal, are placed in the highest grades and 
command the best prices in the open market. 

Quality in wheat is a very complex thing ; and, when it 
is necessary to measure it, a number of more or less inde- 
pendent factors must be considered. These factors were 
discussed by Dr. Charles Saunders in a very exhaustive 
and masterly manner in a Central Experimental Farm 
bulletin ®^ published in the year 1907, and they have re- 
cently been summarized by Professor C. H. Bailey, who 
is a cereal technologist, as follows : "^^ 

(1) Relative 'plumpness of the hernels, which influences 
the yield or percentage of flour which can be produced from 
the grain. 

(2) Density of the hemels, which also affects the yield 
of flour, since, other things being equal, a larger propor- 
tion of the endosperm or " floury "'portion of the kernel 
can be separated as flour when it is hard or vitreous in tex- 
ture rather than soft or " starchy." 

(3) Moisture content of the grain, which affects its 
keeping qualities, ease of milling, and losses which occur 
through evaporation during the process of milling. 

69 Charles E. Saunders, Quality in Wheat, Bulletin No. 57, Cen- 
tral Experimental Farm, Ottawa, pp. 6-28, 

70 C. H. Bailey, Marquis Wheat; II, Milling Quality, Bulletin 
No. 137, Minnesota Wheat Investigations, Series II, University Farm, 
St. Paul, 1914, p. 10. 



DISCOVEKY OF MAKQUIS WHEAT 199 

(4) Soundness of the gram, as indicating its freedom 
from fermentative changes. 

(5) Baking strength of the flour, or its ability to pro- 
duce a large, well-raised loaf of bread. The relative 
strength of flour is influenced by at least tv70 groups of 
factors: (a) The percentage and physical properties of 
the two principal proteins of wheat flour, known collec- 
tively as gluten, and (b) the quantity and nature of the 
yeast food originally present in the flour and formed dur- 
ing the process of fermentation. 

(6) Absorption, or percentage of water necessary to 
make a dough of proper consistency from the flour in bread- 
making, since the more water that can be employed per 
unit of flour, the greater the weight of bread which can be 
produced from it. 

(7) The color of the flour, the demand being for a very 
white product. ''^^ 

Factors (3) and (4), the moisture content and the 
soundness of the grain, are controlled almost entirely by 
the method of curing and handling the grain after it is 
harvested and are not affected by varietal characteristics. 
When Dr. Saunders was re-selecting all the mixed wheats 
which came into his hands at Ottawa and the progeny of 
numerous crosses which he made in 1903 and in subse- 
quent years, he had to pay particular attention to the 
plumpness and hardness of the kernels as influencing the 
flour yield, and to the gluten content and general baking 
qualities of the flour, including baking strength, absorp- 

71 Professor Bailey also points out that the quality of any wheat 
is influenced not only by its varietal characteristics but also by the 
soil and climatic conditions under which it is grown. Thus the 
protein content and baking strength will almost invariably be 
lower when the wheat is grown in a moist soil than when it is 
produced under arid conditions. On the other hand, unfavorable 
conditions, such as drought, rust, and hot winds, will result in 
more or less shriveled grain giving lower flour yields when milled. 



200 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

tion and color. In doing this, his University training in 
chemistry stood him in good stead. One of the most re- 
markable features of the work of Dr. Saunders is that he 
not only crosses wheats, selects their progeny, propagates 
the selections on plots and in fields, and records all their 
field characteristics such as yield and earliness, but that 
he also carries out all the needful baking and milling tests 
himself in his own laboratory. 

British millers demand from Canada hard red spring 
wheat which shall produce flour which shall not only be 
white and have good absorption but which shall have the 
highest possible baking strength. The strong Canadian 
flour is perhaps not the best for making loaves with di- 
rectly, so far as the consumer is concerned, but it is in- 
valuable for mixing purposes. The British miller has 
plenty of soft wheat at his disposal and thus can readily 
obtain an abundance of flour which is relatively weak. 
He therefore mixes the strong Canadian flour with the 
weaker flour from soft wheats and thus produces a stand- 
ard flour of his own design. On account of there being 
much more soft wheat for sale than hard wheat, the latter, 
in accordance with the law of supply and demand, natu- 
rally fetches the higher price. There is, therefore, a very 
good reason why the Red Fife and Marquis wheat of west- 
ern Canada, which produce flour of the very highest bak- 
ing strength, should be so much sought for in the British 
market. 

From the first, when selecting new wheats, Dr. Saun- 
ders bore the requirements of the British market in mind ; 
and he determined never to send out from Ottawa to the 
farmers of the West, for general cultivation, any new va- 
riety of wheat which would be inferior to Red Fife in its 
milling and baking qualities. This, of course, led to 
scores of rejections of otherwise promising varieties, and 




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DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 201 

no one of his selections to which he attaches any value has 
failed to pass the most rigorous milling and baking tests. 
That Marquis gives so much satisfaction to millers and 
bakers is therefore not due to any accident but to the 
careful work of Dr. Saunders who, as the first miller and 
the first baker of the new wheat, appreciated the good 
qualities of its flour several years before it became an ar- 
ticle of commerce. 

When beginning the task of re-selecting all the more or 
less mixed wheats assembled at Ottawa in 1903, which led 
to the discovery of Marquis, Dr. Saunders had not a mill, 
or a fermenting cupboard, or an oven in his laboratory; 
and, in the absence of this apparatus, he judged the quality 
of the wheat flour from his different wheat plants by 
means of the chewing test. In the art of applying this 
test he soon became a veritable master, and thereby con- 
siderably hastened the work of selection. It had long 
been known to practical wheat buyers that some rough 
idea of the baking strength of flour can be obtained by 
chewing for about four or five minutes a few kernels of 
the wheat from which the flour is to be made, and by then 
examining in the flngers the elasticity of the little pellet of 
gluten taken from the mouth. Dr. Saunders, after carry- 
ing out this simple test for a large number of times, found 
that it was thereby possible to acquire considerable facil- 
ity for judging flour quality, and since then he has used 
the test extensively. To obtain sufficient gluten for a test, 
he usually chewed about ten or a dozen kernels from the 
crop of each individual plant which was being considered 
as a possible progenitor of a new variety of wheat. He 
found it to be a general rule that the strongest flour is ob- 
tained from those wheats which produce gluten having the 
greatest ability to recover its shape. ''^ 

72 Charles E. Saunders, loc. oit., p. 9. 



202 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

In discussing the chewing test, Dr. Saunders says: 
" The variations in the quality of the gluten observed in 
different plants of the same pedigree are often very great, 
and it is not claiming too much to say that this simple and 
apparently inefficient method of testing enables one to se- 
lect with a fair degree of certainty a few of the best plants 
each season, and this enormously reduces the labor which 
would otherwise be involved in multiplying a large num- 
ber of strains, most of which would ultimately be rejected. 
That this crude method of testing is infallible, one cannot 
maintain. The writer has shown, however, by actual bak- 
ing trials that it possesses sufficient accuracy to be worthy 
of the very serious attention of all wheat-breeders, although 
an investigator may have to perform the test several hun- 
dreds of times before acquiring any proficiency in it. It is 
not really a very difficult matter to judge in this way, as 
a rule with fair accuracy, both the gluten strength and 
the color of the flour which would be produced from the 
wheat in question; and, if time were taken to weigh the 
wheat used and the globule of gluten produced, it would 
certainly be possible to form a rough estimate of the pro- 
portion of gluten which the wheat would yield. The 
writer does not know whether this method of judging the 
quality of individual plants has been used by other investi- 
gators or not, but he would strongly recommend it as im- 
peratively necessary for any one attempting to breed wheat 
for high quality. It requires some patience and a fairly 
good set of teeth, but these two attributes can be consid- 
ered essential to all breeders of wheat. A study of the 
later sections of this bulletin will make it clear to any one 
that the usual observations on the color and hardness of 
the kernels are almost useless for estimating flour strength 
in breeding new wheats. The chewing test is certainly of 
great value although it should always be confirmed by 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 203 

actual baking trials as soon as sufficient wheat is obtainable 
for that purpose.'^ 

Dr. Saunders' application of the chewing test has a 
definite historical importance^ for he thereby obtained the 
clew to the excellent milling and baking qualities of Mar- 
quis wheat. He selected the first head of Marquis in 
1903 because, in addition to having other good qualities, 
it passed this test. The progeny of the first head of Mar- 
quis successfully withstood the chewing test in 1904 and 
1905 ; and it was not until the close of this period that, 
having set up a small experimental mill, a fermenting 
cupboard, and an oven in his laboratory, Dr. Saunders 
was able to grind the wheat into flour and bake the dough 
into bread in the usual manner. Rigorous milling and 
baking tests made with the new apparatus completely con- 
firmed the judgment of Marquis which he had made three 
seasons previously from the examination of the little glu- 
ten pellets taken from his mouth. 

Marquis wheat, since being generally introduced into 
Canada and the United States, has been subjected to a 
great number of tests for its milling and baking qualities 
in the laboratories of cerealists and millers; and every- 
where it has been pronounced to be, as regards these quali- 
ties, a first-class wheat. 

Comparative milling and baking experiments made with 
Marquis and other standard varieties of hard spring wheat 
were carried out by Professor Ladd '^^ of the N^orth Da- 
kota Agricultural Experiment Station in the years 1913 
and 1914, and by Professor Bailey ^* of the Minnesota 

73 E. F. Ladd, Chemical and Physical Constants for Wheat and 
Mill Products, N. Dakota Agr. Exp. Sta., Bulletin No. 114, 1916, 
pp. 273-297. 

74 C. H. Bailey, Marquis Wheat, II, The Milling Quality of 
Marquis Wheat, Minn. Agr. Exp. Sta., Bulletin No. 137, 1914, 
pp. 9-14. 



204 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Agricultural Experimental Station in 1913, and the re- 
sults have been summarized by Messrs. Ball and Clark '^^ 
as follows : 

^^ The published data show that the Marquis wheat sam- 
ples tested were equal or slightly superior in most re- 
spects to the samples of Fife, Bluestem, and Preston (Vel- 
vet Chaff) wheats raised under similar conditions. A 
higher total yield of flour was obtained from the Marquis. 
The percentage of bran was less, while that of shorts was 
greater from the Marquis than from the three standard 
groups of spring common wheats. Compared with durum 
wheat, the Marquis is slightly lower in yield of flour and 
shorts but higher in yield of bran. 

" The baking quality of Marquis flour is high. It con- 
tains more crude protein than the flours of the three prin- 
cipal groups of spring common wheat. The amount of 
water absorbed by the Marquis flour in dough making also 
is high. These are important features in determining 
the expansive quality of the flour or its gluten. The loaf 
volume of the Marquis exceeds that of the other hard 
spring common wheats. There is comparatively little dif- 
ference in the color, texture, and crumb of the Marquia 
-and of the other spring common wheats. 

" In short the data show the Marquis to be a first-class 
milling wheat." 

XXII. The Origm of Hard Red Calcutta 

Hard Eed Calcutta, the female parent of Marquis, is a 
wheat which was imported into Canada by Dr. William 
Saunders some thirty years ago for experimental pur- 
poses. It was grown in plots at the Central Experimen- 
ri • ' 

75 C. E. Ball and J, A. Clark, Experiments with Marquis Wheat, 
Bulletin No. 400, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of 
Agriculture, Washington, 1916, p. 40. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 205 

tal Farm and at tlie branch farms, and a certain number 
of samples were sent out for trial to farmers and experi- 
mentalists in various places. Twenty-seven such samples 
were distributed from Ottawa in 1892/^ but for various 
reasons, particularly on account of its small yield and very 
short straw, the Indian wheat has not proved a success 
under Canadian conditions. ''^'^ 

Hard Red Calcutta, when grown in Canada, was found 
to ripen exceedingly early in the season, some two or three 
weeks earlier than Red Fife; but, unfortunately, linked 
with this very desirable character were others which were 
very undesirable, the chief being a poor yield, very short 
straw, the shattering of the grains from their glumes when 
ripe, and the bearded condition of the heads. 

The newly imported Indian wheat was crossed with 
Red Fife in 1892 with the hope of obtaining a wheat like 
Red Fife but which would ripen much earlier in the sea- 
son than the standard variety. "^^ The progeny of the cross 
included types with short straw, with long straw, and with 
medium straw; types with short heads, long heads and 
intermediate heads; types with the early-ripening habit, 
the late-ripening habit; and so forth. From all these 
types were selected a few which most nearly resembled 
Red Fife in general appearance but which possessed the 
early-ripening habit ; and it was the best one of these few 
which was subsequently named and introduced as Marquis. 

Under what circumstances Hard Red Calcutta came 
into existence in India is unknown to the writer. It is 
very probable that its origin, like that of so many other 

76 Experimental Farms Reports for 1902, p. 14. 

77 S. A, Bedford in a report on wheats grown at Brandon Experi- 
mental Farm in 1891, Experimental Farms Reports for 1901, p. 
249. 

78 See Section II on : The Seleotion of Marquis by Dr. Cha/rles E. 
Bounders. 



206 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

cerealsj lias never been accurately recorded. Hard Eed 
Calcutta, as already pointed out in an earlier Section,'^® 
is a commercial expression and includes several different 
types of wheat. Thus, for instance, there is Hard Eed 
Calcutta with white chaff, Hard Eed Calcutta with brown 
chaff, and Hard Eed Calcutta with black chaff, these types 
breeding true and being quite distinct from one another. 
All these types originated in India but how and where are 
not known. One of them, but which one is also not known, 
was chosen as the female parent in the cross from which 
Marquis originated. 

XXIII. The Origin of Red Fife 

The story of the introduction of the celebrated wheat 
generally known as Eed Fife or Scotch Fife into ^orth 
America, is fraught with the elements of romance and has 
exercised the mythopceic faculty of those who have handed 
it down to us. To relate it here harmonizes well with our 
main theme, for, as we have seen, Eed Fife is the male 
parent of Marquis. 

Eed Fife is called Red because its grains, when typi- 
cally developed, are of a good red color, and Fife after 
David Fife, an Ontario farmer, who was the first to raise 
Eed Fife on this side of the Atlantic, and who introduced 
this variety into Canadian agriculture almost eighty years 
ago. 

J. W. Clarke, a Wisconsin farmer, had an excellent crop 
of Eed Fife upon his farm in the year 1860. His yield 
averaged 36 bushels per acre, and so pleased was he with 
his harvest that he wrote a letter to the Country Gentle- 
man and Cultivator telling of his experiences and recom- 
mending the new variety of wheat to agriculturists in gen- 
eral. Incidentally, he referred to the originator of Eed 

79 Section II. 



DISCOVEKY OF MAKQUIS WHEAT 207 

Fife as being David Fife of Otonabee in what was then 
called Canada West but now Ontario.^^ 

Clarke's letter naturally attracted attention in Canada, 
and in March, 1861, it was reproduced in the Canadian 
Agriculturalist, Accompanying the first letter, however, 
was a second, written by George Essen, in which the main 
facts relating to the introdiiction of Bed Fife in Canada 
were recorded for the first time and by an eye-witness. 
George Essen was one of David Fife's neighbors. More- 
over, the Fifes and Essens had both come from the Kin- 
cardine parish of TuUyallen in Scotland, and, as pioneers, 
had settled together at Otonabee, Peterborough County, 
Ontario. It is very evident, therefore, that George Essen 
was in a particularly good position to know the true facts 
concerning the introduction of the new wheat which was 
becoming so famous. Essen's letter was as follows : 

" About the year 1842 David Fife of the township of 
Otonabee, Canada West (now Ontario), procured through 
a friend in Glasgow, Scotland, a quantity of wheat which 
had been obtained from a cargo direct from Danzig. As 
it came to hand just before spring seed-time, and not know- 
ing whether it was a fall or spring variety, Mr. Fife con- 
cluded to sow part of it that spring and wait for the result. 
It proved to be a fall wheat as it never ripened, except 
three ears which grew apparently from a single grain. 
These were preserved, and although sown the next year 
under very unfavorable circumstances, being quite late 
and in a shady place, it proved at harvest entirely free from 
rust, when all the wheat in the neighborhood was badly 
rusted. The produce of this was carefully preserved, and 
from it sprang the variety of wheat known over Canada 
and the ISTorthern States by the different names of Fife, 
Scotch, and Glasgow. As the facts occurred in my imme- 

80 The Country Gentleman and Cultivator, October, 1860. 



208 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

diate neighborhood and being intimately acquainted, not 
only with the introducer, but with the circumstances, I can 
vouch for the correctness of the statement and, if neces- 
sary, produce incontestible proof." *^ 

This letter seems to afford conclusive evidence that the 
wheat from which Red Fife sprang was formerly grown 
in central or eastern Europe, that it was conveyed by ship 
from the port of Danzig to the port of Glasgow, and that at 
the latter place a sample of it was procured from the cargo 
and sent to David Fife in Ontario. There is therefore 
no reason whatever to suppose that Red Fife, as its syno- 
nyms Scotch Fife and Glasgow seem to suggest, was ever 
grown in Scotland. 

There were some who were inclined to believe that Red 
Eife originated as a sport from David Fife's imported 
seed and therefore that it constituted a new variety which 
first came into existence in Ontario. This hypothesis, 
which was never very satisfactory, has now been shown by 
Dr. Saunders to be superfluous, for he has demonstrated 
by exact comparison that Red Fife is identical with a cen- 
tral European variety of wheat known as Galician, 

In his evidence, given as Dominion Cerealist before the 
Committee on Agriculture at Ottawa in 1905, Dr. Charles 
Saunders, after quoting George Essen's letter, made the 
following statements : '^ This account has given rise to 
the idea that Red Fife is a Canadian wheat, that it origi- 
nated with Mr. Fife in some wholly unaccountable man- 
ner, or as a sport from a European variety. It always 
seemed to me probable that the kernel which Mr. Fife 
obtained was merely a seed of some common European va- 
riety which had found its way into the wheat from Danzig. 

81 The Canadian Agriculturalist, March, 1861, p. 167. The letters 
of Clarke and Essen are here cited from an article Canadian Wheat 
History prepared by C. C. James and published in the Grain Grow- 
ers' Guide, June 7, 1916, p. 36. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQIJIS WHEAT 209 

Last season, among our newly-imported European varie- 
ties, was one under the name of ^ Galician/ obtained from 
a seedsman in Germany. ]^ow, Galicia lies about 300 
miles inland from Danzig. This imported Galician wheat 
struck me at once as being very much like Red Eife, and I 
therefore sowed it last spring alongside Red Eife, and 
watched them both very carefully throughout the season. 
They proved to be identical at all stages of their growth 
as well as when the grain was harvested. A larger plot of 
Galician wheat furnished grain for milling purposes. 
This was ground, analyzed and baked. Red Fife from 
a plot in the same field was similarly treated. The two 
samples of flour were found to be alike in all respects, and 
thus the absolute identity of the two wheats was estab- 
lished. The firm from which the seed of the Galician 
wheat was obtained, informed me that the variety was 
procured by them many years ago from a farmer in Ga- 
licia. It seems, therefore, quite clear that the kernel of 
wheat which came into the hands of Mr. Eife, was a kernel 
of this Galician spring wheat, accidentally present in the 
cargo of winter wheat from Danzig, of which he obtained 
a portion. It is interesting to be able to throw this light 
on the subject of the origin of Red Eife, which has hitherto 
seemed very dark. There is no doubt that this variety is 
still grown in Europe, and so far as our tests have gone, it 
seems to be of the same quality there as it is here." ^^ 

It therefore seems certain : that Red Eife was originally 
grown in mid-Europe; that one of its kernels was con- 
veyed in a cargo of winter wheat, via the Baltic and the 
[N'orth Sea, from Danzig to Glasgow ; that a sample of the 
cargo containing the kernel in question was procured by 

82 The Origin of Red Fife Wheat, Evidence of Dr. Charles E. 
Saunders before the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture and 
Colonization, Ottawa, 1905, pp. 216-217. 



210 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

some one at the Scottish port ; that this sample was sent 
to David Fife at his farm in Ontario about the year 1842 ; 
that this single kernel germinated and produced a plant 
with three heads; that the kernels of these three heads, 
when sown the next year, gave rise to the wheat which be- 
came known as Red Fife; and that Red Fife is identical 
with a wheat known as Galician which was recently in 
cultivation in Galicia. 

George Essen's letter was but little noticed at the time 
it was written and soon passed into oblivion. As Red 
Fife grew in importance with the passage of years, the 
story of its origin became a tradition which, as it passed 
from mouth to mouth, gradually assumed varied and color- 
ful forms. Some of these traditions which deal chiefly 
with the manner in which the original sample of grain 
was first procured, will now be told. 

A contributor *^ to the Manitoba Daily Free Press, 
writing in 1883 in reference to Red Fife, says: "The 
first wheat grown in Canada was on a farm owned by a 
person by the name of Fyfe in the township of Otonabee, 
County of Peterborough. Mr. Fyfe hired a Scotchman as 
a farm laborer. When his time expired with Mr. Fyfe, he 
decided on returning to his native country. Mr. Fyfe re- 
quested him to send a Scotch bonnet from Glasgow. When 
there a vessel from the Black Sea was unloading wheat at 
one of the docks.^* He procured the full of the bonnet 
and sent it on the first opportunity to Mr. Fyfe. I have 
many times been on the same farm." 

Another tradition, current at Peterborough at the pres- 
ent day, also includes the incident of the cap but with dif- 
ferent details. It is as follows : " David Fife did not 

83 M. Colquhoun of Mansfield, Ontario, in the Manitoba Daily Free 
Press, Feb. 24, 1883, p. 8. 

84 In this story the Black Sea is substituted for Danzig on the 
Baltic. This is doubtless an error due to imperfect memory. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 211 

send for the seed. An acquaintance, strolling along the 
dock at Glasgow, found men unloading wheat. He knew 
that rife had emigrated to Canada, and he also knew of 
a mutual friend who proposed to go out to the new coun- 
try presently. The thought struck him to take a sample 
of the wheat which to his observation looked very good, 
and send it to Fife. He had nothing in which to hold 
the wheat, but there was a hole in the lining of his cap. 
He opened the lining at the hole, filled in a handful, and 
afterwards wrapped it up in paper. Fife received the 
seed and planted it. It all grew but rusted badly, except 
five heads, all from one stalk or root. Two of these heads 
were eaten by oxen leaving only three heads. The great 
probability is that the single grain from which the three 
heads grew was an accidental hybrid." ^^ 

The incident about the oxen has been connected with 
David Fife's wife and in this form is told as follows: 
^^ Mrs. Fife is entitled to share in her husband's honor, 
for, discovering the family cow contentedly making a meal 
of the growing clump of grain, she was in time to rescue a 
portion of it before it was too late." ^^ It may be added 
that a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Fife was taken when 
they were very advanced in years and was reproduced in 
several newspapers. 

Another tradition ^^ introduces a sack : David Fife 
" having by experiment found that the Scotch Danzig 
wheat was a spring and not a winter variety, the sack in 
which the wheat had been contained was looked up and a 

85 This tradition was told to Mr. F. H. Dobbin of Peterborough, 
who kindly wrote it down and sent it to me in August, 1918, Mr. 
Dobbin, in his letter to the author stated that he was assured by 
one who knew all the circumstances that this tradition is the cor- 
rect one as opposed to another about to be related. 

86 C. C. James, Canadian Wheat History, Grain Growers' Guide, 
June 7, 1916, p. 36. 

»T lUd. 



212 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

handful of the grain was sown in the succeeding year." If 
this story were true, and the writer, in view of George 
Essen's letter is not prepared to accept it as such, we 
should he obliged to regard Eed Fife as having sprung not 
from a single plant hut from many scores of plants, thus 
having a multiple origin. 

In the first two of the traditions which have been re- 
lated so far, David Fife is represented as not sending for 
the wheat hut as receiving it as an unexpected present from 
a friend in Scotland. Another tradition which is told at 
much greater length and with many details not appearing 
elsewhere, and which is regarded by Mr. F. H. Dobbin, the 
present town-clerk of Peterborough, as authentic, has a 
very different complexion, for it represents Fife as a man 
who was anxious to raise a better kind of wheat than was 
locally available and who therefore sent to Scotland on 
two occasions for foreign seed-wheat for experimental pur- 
poses. The story ^^ told by Mr. Dobbin is as follows : 

" The locality in which the celebrated Fife Wheat was 
first propagated, is that which is now known as the Mid- 
land District of Ontario. This part of the province lies 
midway between Toronto and Kingston, skirts Lake On- 
tario, extends back from the Lake for a distance of forty 
miles, and comprises in part the counties of Durham, 
JSTorthumberland, Peterborough, and Hastings. 

" The township of Otonabee, in which the Fife family 
lived, forms the most southern part of the county of Peter- 
borough, and is bounded on the west by the river Otonabee, 
on the south by Rice Lake, on the north by the townships 
immediately adjoining, and on the east by the county of 
Hastings. At the time of which we are speaking, all this 
section of the country was comprised in what was known 

88 This story was kindly sent to me in August, 1918, by Mr. Dob- 
bin, to whom I applied for information. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 213 

as the Colbome District, and was represented as a munici- 
pal unit in tlie Old House of Assembly of Upper Canada. 
The Township of Otonabee was one of the first to be set- 
tled, men going into its forests as early as 1816. So, when 
the Fife family reached Canada and directed their steps 
to Otonabee as their future home, settlers were already in 
possession of farm lands and many locations had been 
procured from the Crown. The Fife farm is situated 
about seven miles from the city of Peterborough. 

" The late David Fife, the subject of this memoir, set- 
tled in Otonabee in the early thirties of the last century. 
For several years after that time, the wheat in general 
sowing in the locality was a fall wheat of a brand known 
as Siberian. This had come into favor largely owing to 
the fact that those who sold it as seed claimed that it was 
particularly fitted to survive the rigors of a Canadian win- 
ter. However, Siberian was found to exhibit a weakness 
in that it often became rusted badly with a consequent 
diminution in the crop. Fife, being desirous of obtaining 
improved seed, sent to Glasgow for samples. These were 
forwarded, but arriving in Canada late in the season, were 
held in storage at Smith's Creek on the lake front until the 
following spring. Smith's Creek is now known as Port 
Hope. The samples cost, in money as now we count it, 
about three dollars per bushel and a considerable sum for 
storage. The seed was sown but never sprouted. ^^ 

" In 1841 Fife again became interested in importing 
seed-wheat and wrote to a personal friend named Strothers 
who was a clerk in a grain store in Glasgow, asking that 
samples of a well-recommended Eussian wheat be pro- 
cured and forwarded. Mr. Strothers selected a new kind, 

89 According to Essen's letter the fall wheat germinated but did 
not ripen. The earlier account written in 1861 is probably the 
correct one. 



214 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

brought from Danzig by ship, and sent it on, saying that 
from what he had learned from the importers the seed 
would answer Fife's requirements. Two lots of wheat 
were sent, one for fall and one for spring sowing. 

" The second shipment was held at Cobourg during the 
fall and winter, as before. Both lots of wheat were sown 
in the following spring but the fall wheat never germi- 
nated. The spring wheat grew, developed, and ripened. 
In growth and appearance it proved to be superior to any 
other wheat in the neighborhood, but only three heads were 
saved. It is known that the seed was not sown until all 
the other kinds of grain were above the ground, as Fife 
was ill and wished to watch the sowing and the cultivation 
himself. The new variety, to the surprise of all, was 
absolutely free from rust.^*^ 

^' The crop was gathered by Mr. Fife and carefully 
stored. A pint of seed was realized which, on being sown 
early the next year, produced a half-bushel at harvest time. 
From this limited quantity of seed the neighborhood was 
supplied with samples for trial, and so successful was the 
result that the district benefited largely from the Fife 
wheat. 

" The spring following, this would be about 1843, a 
man named Henderson bought from Fife one bushel and 
from this as seed reaped nearly three hundred bushels,^ ^ 

90 Red Fife wheat is not rust-resistant but often rusts badly. 
Essen's and Dobbin's accounts agree in stating that the first crop 
was free from rust when the other wheat suffered severely from 
the disease. This may be due to the fact that the seed was sown 
in a protected place and not in an open field. Essen says the seed 
was sown " quite late and in a shady place." 

91 As a story is told, errors are apt to be introduced where figures 
are quoted. It takes more than a bushel to sow a single acre, and 
50 bushels to an acre is an excellent crop. No one ever yet obtained 
300 bushels to an acre, so that Mr. Dobbin's figures here must be 
fallacious. Such a crop might have come from ten bushels of seed 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 216 

a part of which he disposed of at $3.00 per bushel, errone- 
ously naming it Glasgow Wheat. The parent seed never 
grew in Scotland but was imported from one of the Ens- 
sian districts by ship. Efforts made to locate the terri- 
tory from which the seed was derived were never success- 
ful, and the origin of the new wheat was looked upon 
as an accidental occurrence. From these small beginnings 
came the wheat that has so largely contributed to the ag- 
ricultural reputation of this section of Ontario, and which 
has made the crops desirable to millers all over Canada." 

Such, then, are the traditions of Red Fife which have 
come down to us. All of them doubtless contain some 
truth, but to what extent certain of the more picturesque 
details have been unconsciously invented it is at present 
difficult or impossible to say. It may be that David Fife's 
correspondence with his friend in Scotland and with his 
neighbors is still in the possession of his descendants. If 
it could be found it would doubtless throw a new and very 
interesting light upon the history of the wheat with which 
the family name of Fife is so honorably associated. 

In Ontario, about the year 18Y0, spring wheat formed 
about 60 per cent, of the total crop, and the chief variety 
of spring wheat grown was Red Fife.^^ Red Fife, after 
its successful introduction in Ontario, soon passed into the 
United States; and, as we have seen, an excellent crop 
of it was raised by a Wisconsin farmer in 1860. With 
the development of the wheat lands in the Great Plains 
region, Red Fife was introduced into Minnesota and the 
two Dakotas. 

but not from one. In the preceding paragraph a pint of seed is 
said to have been realized from the three heads. This is another 
impossibility. Possibly the original statement was " less than a 
pint." 

92 Spring Wheat in Ontario, Manitoba Daily Free Press, March 16, 
1883, p. 7. 



216 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Exactly when Red Fife was first sown in western Can- 
ada is unknown; but a certain small amount was doubt- 
less being grown in Manitoba as early as about 1870. 
This seems to follow from the fact that in 1876 nearly 
one thousand bushels of Eed Fife were exported from 
Manitoba to Ontario to re-seed the very province in which 
this variety of wheat had originated. The account of this 
remarkable transaction is related by C. C. James ^* as 
follows : " In 1876 spring wheat failed in Ontario, the 
old reliable Red Fife apparently had run out, it had lost 
its vigor — perhaps the fault lay in the soil rather than 
in the grain. The Red River Fife wheat had made a repu- 
tation, and so in the fall of the year the late R. C. Steele 
of Steele Brothers, Toronto, started for Manitoba. He 
traveled by rail to St. Paul and thence to Fisher's Land- 
ing, where, doubtful of the river navigation so late in the 
year, he took a lumber wagon and made the 150 miles 
to Winnipeg in 30 hours of continuous going. He wished 
to bring back 5,000 bushels, but all that he was able to 
secure at Winnipeg was 857 bushels, which he bought at 
85 cents a bushel. This wheat came down to Toronto by 
steamer from Winnipeg to Fisher's Landing where he 
secured some additional United States wheat, thence by 
rail to Duluth, by vessel from Duluth to Sarnia, and by 
rail from Sarnia to Toronto. This was the first wheat 
exported from Manitoba to the East. It was in the latter 
part of 1876. Mr. Steele paid 85 cents per bushel for this 
wheat on October 12, 1876." 

In Manitoba, up to about the year 1882, the amount of 
wheat grown in the province had been scarcely more than 
sufficient to supply the local market. However, with the 

93 C. C. James, Canadian Wheat History, Grain Growers' Guide, 
Winnipeg, June 7, 1916, p. 36. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 2lY 

opening of tlie first railway in the province in 1878 giving 
direct access to St. Paul from St. Boniface, and with the 
prospect of the completion of the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
way which would connect the prairie with eastern ocean 
portSj grain dealers, farmers, and railway men became con- 
vinced that a great export trade in wheat would soon be 
developed in the Canadian West. In 1883, therefore, by 
which time the introduction of the purifier into flour mills 
had greatly enhanced the value of hard spring wheats, an 
effort was made to improve the quality of the crops. To 
this end a large amount of Red Pife was brought into 
Manitoba from Minnesota. 

In 1882, James Hartney imported into Manitoba from 
Minnesota a car-load of Red Pife. He sowed it on vir- 
gin land and it produced a splendid crop. Some of the 
grain was shown at an exhibition held in the fall of the 
year at Winnipeg, and it carried off the prizes of the Cana- 
dian Pacific Railway Company and of the Hudson's Bay 
Company for the best ten bushels of wheat. At that time 
the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was hard at work 
constructing its great line of steel across the continent, and, 
with a view to future business, was anxious to demonstrate 
the agricultural possibilities of the West. About 1882, 
therefore, the Company began to make a series of experi- 
mental farms all along the line from Winnipeg to Calgary. 
Horses and plows, accompanied by laborers, were conveyed 
by train ; and, at intervals along the line, whenever there 
was found a piece of open, level, promising-looking land, 
plows, horses and men were detrained and the virgin soil 
was turned up ; and in the autumn the land was back-set. 
The Company sowed all these new farms with Red Fife 
purchased from Hartney in the winters of 1882 and 1883, 
with the result that the amount of Red Pife available for 



218 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

seed rapidly increased. The Company supplied the new 
seed to the settlers, with whom it was in great demand.^* 

In 1883 the firm of Traill, Maulson and Clark arranged 
for the importation into Manitoba from Minnesota of 
10,000 bushels of Eed Fife. The government, for the pur- 
pose of assisting in the improvement of the wheat crop, 
allowed this and other consignments of Red Fife intended 
for seed purposes to come into the country duty free ; and 
the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, with the same 
object in view, held out a special inducement to importers 
by offering to bring in seed wheat of this variety free of 
charge.®^ 

The outcome of the efforts at improvement just de- 
scribed was that after 1882 Red Fife soon replaced the 
softer wheats, such as Club, Golden Drop, and White Rus- 
sian, so that in the early eighties it became the standard 
variety of wheat in western Canada. 

Red Fife was, and still is, a first-class cereal; and it 
will always be interesting historically, not only for the 
fact that it established the reputation of the Dominion for 
the production of high-grade wheat with excellent milling 
and baking qualities, but also because it was the male par- 
ent first of Preston and subsequently of Marquis. It has 
been justified not merely by its own achievements but by 
its children. 

XXIV. Marquis as the Off-spring of Red Fife and 
Hard Bed Calcutta 

The rudimentary plant or embryo present in every seed 
arises in the first instance from a fertilized egg ; and it is 

94 The above facts concerning the introduction of Red Fife into 
western Canada by James Hartney and the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
way Company, were kindly related to me by Mr. William Sharman of 
Winnipeg, who himself sowed Red Fife in Manitoba in 1883. 

95 Red Fife Wheat, Manitoba Daily Free Press, Feb. 24, 1883, p. 8. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQTJIS WHEAT 219 

no more possible for an unfertilized wlieat egg to develop 
into a wheat plant, or an oak egg to develop into an oak- 
tree, than it is for an unfertilized fowl's egg to develop 
into a chicken, or an unfertilized human egg into a child. 
That plants and animals alike spring from fertilized eggs 
is one of the most fundamentally important and wonderful 
of all biological discoveries. 

Exactly how the egg which gave rise in succeeding gen- 
erations to the plants from which Marquis was selected, 
came to be fertilized is for us a matter of no little interest, 
and an elucidation of it will now be attempted. There- 
after we shall discuss the influence of the parents of Mar- 
quis upon their off-spring. 

The original kernel from which all the Marquis plants 
in the world have been derived, came into existence, as we 
have seen, from an artificial cross between Eed Eife and 
Hard Eed Calcutta. Pollen dust from some stamens re- 
moved with forceps from a few flowers of the former va- 
riety, was placed on the two feathery stigmas of a flower 
of the latter variety. The pollen grains germinated, each 
grain producing a single pollen tube. The pollen tubes, 
which were exceedingly delicate cylindrical structures, 
grew down the stigmas and made their way, by elongating 
at their apices, into the ovary below. This ovary was a 
tiny chamber containing a single ovule or potential seed 
attached laterally to its wall. One of the pollen tubes, 
guided by chemotropic stimuli, directed its course toward 
the ovule, entered it at its mouth or micropyle, and pene- 
trated into its interior as far as the ovum or egg-cell. 
The egg-cell having been reached, the wall at the tip of the 
pollen tube liquefied and broke down, and from the open- 
ing so produced there were emitted two exceedingly minute 
dense rounded masses of gelatinous protoplasm known as 
male nuclei. One of these nuclei, carried by forces as yet 



220 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

not perfectly understood, advanced through the general 
protoplasm of the egg-cell toward the female nucleus situ- 
ated in its center. The male and the female nuclei, after 
coming into contact, brought their affinity for one another 
to a climax by mingling together and forming one whole ; 
and this nuclear fusion, this formation of a single nucleus 
from two others of opposite sex, marked the completion of 
the act of fertilization. We thus see that the train of 
events which received its impetus from cross-pollination, 
inevitably led to the production of a cross-fertilized egg- 
cell. Without fertilization, the egg-cell would have re- 
mained just as sterile as an unfertilized fowl's egg, and 
in the end it would have withered and died; but, its 
fertilization having been accomplished, a most extraordi- 
nary future was opened to it. Further development be- 
came irresistible, with the result that, in the course of a 
few years, its products became in numbers like the stars 
on a clear night or the grains of yellow sand upon a sea 
beach. 

The fertilized egg-cell resulting from the physical union 
,of the protoplasm of the Hard Red Calcutta and Eed Fife 
parents could not lie dormant, but, immediately, by cell- 
division accompanied by nuclear division, began to swell 
up and become differentiated into distinct parts. Soon it 
became converted into a definite embryo or rudimentary 
plant, with a distinct root and a little shoot, lying hidden 
inside the enlarging ovule and ovary which were now be- 
coming rapidly converted into a grain of wheat. The 
tiny embryo, as it grew to its full size, came to be situated 
on one side of the basal end of the grain. Meanwhile, 
starch, produced from sugar sent from the leaves, and pro- 
teins manufactured from nitrogenous compounds, were 
accumulating in the floury part of the grain which finally 
came to compose about twenty-four twenty-fifths of its 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 221 

mass, the other twenty-fifth part being occupied by the 
embryo. The floury part of a grain in which the starch 
and proteins are stored is known technically as the endo- 
sperm and consists of about a quarter of a million cells. 
To protect the embryo and the food-laden endosperm of 
the kernel under discussion, two coats were developed, one 
from the skin of the ovule and the other from the wall of 
the ovarial chamber. The former, known as the testa or 
seed-coat, soon came to press tightly against the latter, 
known as the pericarp, so that in the end, a single com- 
pound horny layer came into existence on the exterior of 
the grain. Since this layer was red, the grain, when 
viewed from without, was found to possess the red color 
which is so much preferred to white for the hard wheats 
of Canada. 

When the cross-bred kernel was planted in the spring, 
the embryonic plant within rapidly increased in size and 
soon pushed several roots down into the soil. It then 
forced its shoot upwards into the sunlight where it ex- 
panded its first green leaf. Thus the embryo grew into 
a seedling. All this early development was accomplished 
at the expense of the starch and proteins, the reserve food 
materials which had been stored up in the endosperm or 
floury part of the kernel in the preceding summer. These 
substances, when germination began, became converted 
into soluble compounds, the starch breaking up into sugar 
and the proteins into simpler nitrogenous bodies. The 
sugar and nitrogenous bodies, after becoming dissolved in 
water, were then gradually absorbed by the enlarging em- 
bryo, the organ of absorption or cotyledon being a shield- 
shaped structure attached to the axis of the embryo at the 
place of union of the shoot and the first root. In the 
course of about 115 days, the embryo grew into a seedling 
and the seedling into a mature plant. The green leaves 



222 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

unfolded themselves to the sunlight one by one, and the 
slender stem, elongating ever more rapidly, ceased from 
its upward strivings neither night nor day until it had 
raised to the full height its precious burden — the spike of 
flowers. Each flower, left to itself, underwent self-pollina- 
tion: the pollen dust of the three stamens fell upon the 
two stigmas of the same flower when the glumes opened, 
and, as a consequence, the so-called self-fertilization of 
the ovules which normally takes place in all wheat flowers, 
was accomplished. Finally, the flowering spike developed 
into a head of ripe kernels, after which the whole plant, 
with the exception of the kernels, gradually lost its vitality 
and died. Thus the life-cycle of the plant which began 
with the fertilized egg-cell, came to an end with the pro- 
duction of reproductive bodies which provided for the con- 
tinuance of the species in the next year. 

The plants which grew from the seeds of the original 
cross-bred plant were very variable. ]^o full record was 
kept of this variability, but it is probable that the descend- 
ants of the original cross-bred plant became differentiated 
into several scores of distinct types. It was a single head 
of a single plant of one of these types, which was Anally se- 
lected by Dr. Saunders in 1903 to provide the seeds from 
which Marquis originated. 

Since the nucleus of the fertilized egg-cell from which 
sprang the plant which gave rise to Marquis, originated 
from the union of a male nucleus from a Red Fife plant 
and a female nucleus from a Hard Eed Calcutta plant, and 
since all the millions of nuclei in the millions of cells which 
make up every Marquis plant have all been derived from 
that original nucleus, it is not surprising to find that Mar- 
quis exhibits characters of both its original parents. 

Hard Red Calcutta is a very early-ripening wheat with 
short straw and short bearded heads. Its grains are very 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 223 

hard, red, and fairly plump, but shatter readily even when 
the straw is green. From Hard Red Calcutta, its female 
parent, Marquis has inherited its early-ripening habit. 
Marquis also has straw which is a few inches shorter and 
heads which are somewhat smaller than those of Red Fife, 
and here again the maternal influence of Hard Red Cal- 
cutta can be traced. 

Marquis is exceedingly like its male parent. Red Fife, 
in general appearance. Thus it is not bearded like Hard 
Red Calcutta but, like Red Fife, has a few short awns at 
the tip of its head. Also its straw is not nearly as short 
as that of Hard Red Calcutta but, while shorter than, 
that of Red Fife, is of good length. When Marquis and 
Red Fife are growing in adjacent fields before the ripening 
of the grains, even experts find it difficult to tell off-spring 
and parent from one another. However, careful com- 
parison shows that Marquis is a few days earlier in its 
development, is not quite so tall, and has glumes enclosing 
the young grains which are somewhat broader and shorter. 

It thus appears that Marquis stands in a more or less 
intermediate position between its two parents in respect 
to length of straw, length of head, and earliness in ripen- 
ing. In one character, however, it is not intermediate, 
namely, in resistance to the shattering of its ripe grains. 
While Hard Red Calcutta shatters readily, and Red Fife 
shatters to some extent, Marquis resists shattering in a 
high degree. 

XXV. The Future of Marquis 

There is no reason to believe that plant breeders have 
already obtained the utmost possible in their endeavors to 
improve the varieties of wheat now grown, for the wheat- 
plant is a plastic thing and the limits of its variability have 
not yet been ascertained. Moreover, the number of plant 



224 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

breeders who have devoted themselves to the production of 
new wheats has been very limited until recently, while the 
number of kinds of wheat in the world, the properties of 
which require to be investigated and with which experi- 
ments could be made, is very great. The wheat population 
in a field of any common kind of wheat is usually a mixed 
one and consists of a number of elementary varieties differ- 
ing slightly from one another. ^^ Some of these are better 
than the average and some worse. By careful selection ^'^ 
of the best of them, any particular kind of wheat such as 
Ked Fife, Bluestem, or Marquis, can often be consider- 
ably improved; and it was by the employment of this 
method, either consciously or unconsciously, that the older 
workers, Le Couteur, Shirreff, and Hallett in England, 
Eimpau in Germany, ^N'ilsson in Sweden, and others, ob- 
tained their many successes; and it was also by the em- 
ployment of this method that Dawson of Ontario isolated 
his Golden Chaff,^^ Haynes of JSTorth Dakota his Haynes 

9« Every kind of wheat seems to have a tendency to break up 
spontaneously in the course of time into these elementary varieties; 
but what the cause of this may be, we do not know. 

97 For an interesting discussion of the selection method as used by 
the older improvers of cereals, see Hugo de Vries, Plant Breeding, 
Chicago, 1907, pp. 29-90. 

98 According to Professor Zavitz of the Ontario Agricultural Col- 
lege the wheat known as Dawson's Golden Chaff originated as fol- 
lows: Robert Dawson, a farmer living near Paris, Ontario, had 
a field of the White Clawson winter wheat in the year 1881, which 
was badly lodged. In walking over the field, Mr. Dawson ob- 
served a plant standing upright in the midst of the lodged grain. 
He carefuUy saved this one plant and sowed the seed in the autimm. 
In a comparatively short time he had sufficient seed, not only for 
his own requirements, but also for sale to his neighbors. The 
Dawson's Golden Chaff variety of winter wheat, which possesses 
very stiff straw, has been grown more extensively throughout On- 
tario than any other variety (Wheat and Rye, Bulletin No. 261, 
Ontario Department of Agriculture, Toronto, 1918, p. 10). Plot 
tests at Guelph with fourteen varieties of winter wheat for 22 
years showed that Dawson's Golden Chaff gave an annual average 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 225 

Bluestem,^^ Dr. Charles Saunders of Ottawa his Early- 
Red Fife/ Professor W. P. Thompson of the University 
of Saskatchewan his remarkable Dwarf Marquis,^ and 

yield of grain of exactly three bushels per acre over the next highest 
yielding variety {ibid., p. 7). 

99 Bluestem was being grown in 1855 in some Eastern States of the 
U. S. A. as a red winter wheat. It was then taken west and 
grown in the spring-wheat States as a spring wheat, where ap- 
parently it became harder, Haynes began to grow it in 1882 but 
found it mixed with some soft and bearded wheats. In 1884 he 
therefore planted in his garden the grains " from two good heads, 
having three kernels abreast, hoeing it as it grew." From the 
progeny of the two heads he selected only the best and earliest for 
the next sowing. He was then spurred on by hearing of Major 
Hallett's selection work in England. Eleven years of careful and 
continuous head selection of Bluestem resulted " in increasing the 
number of kernels abreast of the spikelet from three to four, with 
the fifth kernel beginning to make its appearance.^* Further, says 
Haynes " The length of the heads is increased about one-third, 
and the berry is much improved in uniformity of color and hard- 
ness. Another important feature is in the earlier maturity by 
five days more than formerly." L. H. Haynes, private pamphlet, 
^Vs by 5"!4 inches, 11 pages, Fargo, North Dakota, published about 
1895. For a typewritten copy of this pamphlet I am indebted to Dr. 
H. K. Hayes, in charge of Plant Breeding at the Minnesota Experi- 
ment Station, St. Paul. 

1 Saunders' strain of Early Red Fife was obtained from a single 
early-ripening plant occurring in a plot of Red Fife. It is just 
like Red Fife in appearance but ripens a few days earlier (C. E. 
Saunders, Methods of Selection, Experimental Farms Reports for 
1909, pp. 202-203). 

2 Dwarf Marquis, which with Professor Thompson's permission is 
here mentioned in cereal literature for the first time, has heads 
of the same length as those of Marquis but straw which is only 
one-quarter of the usual length or even less. It arose from a single 
dwarf plant which came to perfection in a plot of pure-line Marquis 
at the University of Saskatchewan, and it has bred true for several 
years without any signs of breaking up. It never gives rise to tall 
plants; the progeny of each year are all dwarfs. Dwarf Marquis, 
owing to its excessively short straw is, of course, of no commercial 
importance but it is of high interest as bearing on the genetics of 
wheat. The writer in 1918 saw Dwarf Marquis at Saskatoon grow- 
ing in one of Professor Thompson's plots and it presented a very 
striking contrast with Marquis. An interesting parallel is afforded 



226 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Mr. Seager Wheeler of Kosthern his Kitchener and his 
Eed Bobs.^ But of late years another method of improv- 
ing cereals, that of cross-breeding, has been perfected and 
already its application has led to the introduction of Mar- 
quis and Prelude into the great spring-wheat region of 
I^orth America and of the rust-resistant Little Joss into 
England.* These cross-bred wheats combine the most de- 
sirable characteristics of both their parents. Every year 
now sees the advent of new varieties of wheat obtained by 
one or the other of the two methods just described. Tak- 
ing all these facts into consideration it seems not only quite 
possible, but even likely, that at some time in the future 
Marquis will be replaced by some other variety of wheat, 
or perhaps by a succession of varieties, which will be su- 
perior to it in one or more characteristics such as earliness, 
yield, resistance to disease,^ and so forth. Indeed, it is to 

by the dwarf Evening Primrose, Oenothera nanella, whicli arose 
in one of de Vries's plots at Amsterdam and wliieli is only one-third 
of the height of its tall parent Oenothera Lamarckiana. 

3 Kitchener originated in 1911 from a single plant of Marquis 
which to Mr. Wheeler's eye stood out from its fellows as a distinct 
type. Eed Bobs was selected from Bobs. In all probability, Daw- 
son's Golden Chaff, Early Red Fife, Pwarf Marquis, and Kitchener 
all came into existence in the first instance as mutations or sports 
from a single parent. The writer is convinced, however, that Red 
Bobs originated from the progeny of a natural cross, accidentally 
occurring in Mr. Wheeler's plots, between Bobs and either Preston 
or Early Red Fife. The evidence upon which this view is based, 
is given in the Chapter on Red Bobs. 

4 The pioneer producer of wheat hybrids in North America ap- 
pears to have been C. G. Pringle of Charlotte, Vermont. He began 
his work in 1877 and several varieties have received his name, some 
of which have become standards. (P. T. Dondlinger, The Book of 
Wheat, New York, 1912, p. 44.) Dr. William Saunders of Ottawa 
began to cross wheats in 1888. 

5 The wheat crops of the world suffer enormous diminution in 
yield every year through such diseases as Rust, Smut, Wheat Scab, 
and Root-rots. The attempt to produce disease-resisting cereals has 
only just begun. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 



227 



be hoped that such a change as that indicated will actually 
take place; for wheat is merely a convenient means of pro- 
viding the most civilized countries of the earth with food, 
and every real improvement in the varieties grown brings 
with it economy of labor in a task which by its very nature 
man can never shirk — the task of procuring his daily 
bread. 

In the early eighties of last century and until the in- 
troduction of Marquis in 1909, a period of twenty-five 
years, Eed Eife (Scotch Fife) was regarded by many as 
the incomparable spring wheat destined to maintain its 
sway in a large part of 'North America forever. In 1883, 
in an issue of the Manitoba Daily Free Press it was cor- 
rectly described as then being " unsurpassed." But just 
as Eed Fife replaced Golden Drop, White Kussian, Red 
Chaff, Ladoga, Club, and other varieties in Manitoba, so, 
in its turn, it has been replaced over vast areas by Mar- 
quis. Already, however, in certain of the more northerly 
parts of the Canadian wheat-belt, Prelude has replaced 
Marquis ; and the new Ruby, should it prove successful in 
its present trials in the field, may possibly replace Prelude. 
Red Bobs is also a very fine wheat and has entered the 
competition for premier honors in the great spring-wheat 
region. What its future may be time alone will show. 
At present there are only a few acres of this wheat in 
existence, but where it has been grown it has shown great 
promise. The hope built upon it may possibly be justi- 
fied within a few years; but it is well not to forget that 
there is a considerable difference between a promising new 
variety grown in a few fields and that same variety cover- 
ing enormous stretches of the prairie and yielding, as Mar- 
quis actually does, from 200,000,000 "^ to 300,000,000 
bushels of wheat a year. It seems certain, for mechanical 
reasons alone, that Marquis cannot be dislodged from its 



228 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

position as the dominant spring wheat in western Canada 
within five years ; and it is probable that it will still hold 
the lead over large tracts of country ten or twenty years 
hence. 

Marquis, even if it retains its great place for only ten 
or even five years more, will have been of enormous prac- 
tical advantage to the world during the most critical stage 
of its history, for some hundreds of millions of bushels of 
it have been conveyed to Europe during the past four 
years of the Great War to feed the soldiers of the Allies 
in the field and to sustain the civilian populations of the 
British Isles, France, Italy, Belgium and Greece at home. 
In a very real sense Marquis has done much to strengthen 
the sinews of war of those fighting for the great cause of 
liberty, and therefore has been no small factor in making 
victory possible. It is certain that had Marquis not re- 
placed Bed Fife in the great spring-wheat area of ^orth 
America, the world's supply of wheat during the late food 
crisis would have been many millions of bushels less than 
it actually was. 

XXYI. Saunders and Burhanh 

Were there in existence a book recording the services of 
all those who have deserved the gratitude of their fellow- 
men for the improvements they have brought about in cul- 
tivated plants, its pages would be many and its roll of 
honor a very lengthy one. Some day, perhaps, the tri- 
umphs of the plant breeder will be set down in the history 
of a nation as of no less importance than the valorous deeds 
of brave men performed amid blood and mud and the 
thunder of great guns upon the field of battle; but this 
can scarcely be hoped for until the world has entered upon 
its future development in the spirit of a united family. 

Only very few of the names of the leaders in the science 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 229 

of plant breeding are widely known. Of Gregor Mendel, 
the Austro-Silesian monk who, by experiments upon the 
edible Pea, discovered the now famous Mendelian Laws of 
Inheritance, and of the Dutchman, Hugo de Yries, who, by 
his Mutation Theory of Evolution, has also contributed 
much to plant breeding on its theoretical side, many have 
heard ; but, so far as the practice of plant breeding is con- 
cerned, only one name is generally known to the public, 
that of Luther Burbank. He, indeed, may be said to have 
acquired universal fame. By means of books, of maga- 
zines, and of newspapers, the story of his achievements 
has been blown^ as it were, upon the wind, so that at the' 
present time there is scarcely an intelligent man whose 
ear it has not reached. Who has not heard of Burbank's 
potato, of Burbank' s plums, of Burbank's berries, of Bur- 
bank's spineless cacti, and of Burbank's Shasta Daisy ; and 
who does not know that these are but a few only of the 
many novelties that have issued from the celebrated garden 
of Santa Rosa ? Who has not been impressed by the skill- 
ful way in which Burbank has chosen the best variations 
from plots of thousands or tens of thousands of plants in 
which to the ordinary eye all the individuals look alike? 
And, finally, who has not felt astonishment at the often 
surprising products which have issued from his hybridiz- 
ing experiments ? Many are the delights which Burbank 
has contributed to the garden and the orchard. By his 
hard work, his persistency, his skill, his excellent judg- 
ment, and his many successes he has truly deserved the 
reputatiop. he has acquired, and he will leave behind him 
a heritage of plants which will keep his memory green for 
many generations. On the other hand, the names of the 
other masters in the realm of plant breeding, whose new 
kinds of wheat, barley, oats, Indian com, potatoes, flax, 
grapes, melons, fruit-trees, etc., have had, and are having, 



230 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

an immense influence upon human history, remain un- 
known to the general public; and among them is that of 
Dr. Charles E. Saunders whose Marquis wheat is the 
theme of this essay. Of farmers and others who handle 
grain in western Canada the writer has often asked the 
question : who discovered and introduced Marquis wheat ? 
and not so many as one in ten have been able to give a 
correct answer. The name of Charles E. Saunders has 
received no advertisement: neither book nor magazine ar- 
ticle has ever been written about his labors and his achieve- 
ments; but it may safely be said that the economic im- 
portance of Marquis which he discovered and gave to the 
world, by far outweighs at the present moment that of all 
Burbank's novelties put together. The writer does not 
wish in any way to minimize the great interest and value 
of Burbank's work in stating that Bur'bank's efforts at im- 
provements have not been chiefly concerned with the lead- 
ing food-plant. One's delight in beautiful flowers is en- 
tirely aesthetic, and one does not live on spineless cacti, 
upon plums, cherries, raspberries, or walnuts, and com- 
paratively few eat the Burbank potato ; but bread is truly 
the staff of life for the most progressive part of the popu- 
lation of the globe. The eating of wheaten bread, like the 
using of soap, is a mark of civilization; and a great im- 
provement in the king of cereals is therefore of the utmost 
importance to everybody. 

This year, 1918, upon the prairies of western Canada 
and in the Great Plains region of the United States of 
America, there have been produced more than 300,000,000 
bushels of Marquis, a mass of wheat sufficient to provide 
for a whole year the normal bread and other wheat re- 
quirements of a population of 60,000,000 people. The 
average selling price for the 1918 wheat crop has been 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 231 

fixed at about two dollars a bushel.^ Taking two dollars 
a busbel as the average price, it is obvious that the crop 
value of Marquis wheat for the year 1918 is upwards of 
$600,000,000. This sum by far exceeds in amount the 
whole fruit-growing industry in California which for the 
year 1917 has been estimated by Mr. E. E. Kaufman at 
$107,000,000.'^ About a dozen years ago the California 
fruit-growing industry was smaller than it is to-day and 
it was then considered to be worth $60,000,000 per an- 
num.^ Of this amount de Vries, in 1907, estimated that 
Burbank's contribution was scarcely one per cent.,^ but 
there can be no doubt that this contribution has grown, 
considerably since then as more of the fruit-trees have 

6 From data supplied by Mr, Irvine, the Assistant Secretary of the 
Winnipeg Grain Exchange. 

7 For data concerning the value of the California fruit-crop I am 
indebted to Mr. E. E. Kaufman, Field Agent of the Bureau of Crop 
Estimates of the United States Department of Agriculture, and to 
Mr. Howard C. Eowley, publisher of the California Fruit News. 
Mr. Kaufman's estimates of the value of the fruit crop to the 
growers for 1917 is made up as follows: 

Apples $ 6,431,000 Brought forward. . .$ 84,843,000 

Peaches 14,151,000 Figs 1,600,000 

Pears 3,523,000 Plums 3,000,000 

Oranges 23,738,000 Cherries 600,000 

Lemons 2,500,000 Grapes (table) 7,000,000 

Raisins 16,000,000 Grapes (wine) 6,800,000 

Prunes 12,500,000 Olives 1,000,000 

Apricots 6,000,000 Berries of all kinds 1,000,000 

Other fruits 1,000,000 



Carried forward .. $84,843,000 



Total $106,843,000 

Using a somewhat different basis of calculation and including the 
cost for boxing and packing of oranges and lemons, etc., and 
adding $10,000,000 for nuts, Mr. Eowley has calculated that the 
value of the California fruit crop for 1917 was not less than $150,- 
000,000 and was probably between this sum and $175,000,000. 

8 Hugo de Vries, Plant Breeding, Comments on the Experiments 
of Nilsson and Burbank, Chicago, 1907, p. 178. 

9 Ibid. 



232 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

come into bearing. From inquiries made by the author, 
it seems probable that Burbank's contribution to the total 
fruit crop of California in 1917 did not exceed three per 
cent, or, in round figures, $3,000,000.^^ Burbank's po- 
tato has a higher crop value than his fruits. After its 
general introduction it was stated bj the United States 
Department of Agriculture that it was ^adding to the agri- 
cultural productivity of the country an annual sum of 
$17,000,000.^^ If to this $17,000,000 for potatoes we 

10 Of the total California fruit crop, peaches, citrus fruits, prunes, 
apricots, and European grapes form a very important part, and Bur- 
bank, as I am informed by Mr. J. C. Corbett, Horticulturalist in 
charge of cultural and pomological investigations for the United 
States Department of Agriculture, has contributed very little to the 
variety list of this group of fruits. Burbank's chief contribution to 
the fruits of California is to be found in his plums and cherries 
which, e. g., the Wickson plum and the Burbank plimi, are shipped 
away from the State in great quantities. However, the total value 
to the growers in 1917 of California plums was only $3,000,000 and 
of cherries only $600,000, and there are many other plums grown 
in the State beside those originated by Burbank. It is therefore 
very doubtful whether Burbank's plums and cherries represent half 
of the $3,600,000 here given. In his circular called 1918 Offerings of 
Twentieth Century Fruits, etc., Burbank states that 1,092,256 crates 
of his plums and cherries had been shipped away out of the State of 
California in the season of 1918 before November 15, besides other 
shipments made by one large shipping firm which could not make a 
varietal report. Supposing we take the total of crates at 1,200,000 
and reckon the fruit that was put in them as being worth to the 
grower (exclusive of boxing and packing) as much as one dollar a 
crate, then the value to the grower of all the fruit in the crates 
would be $1,200,000. In arriving at the figure of $3,000,000 for Bur- 
bank's contribution to the fruits of California given in the text, I 
have added to this $1,200,000 the large sum of $1,800,000, so as to 
allow for other fruits, contingencies possibly overlooked, and so as 
to err on the generous side of the account. 

11 Hugo de Vries, loc cit., p. 164. 

Mr. William Stuart, Horticulturalist engaged in cultural and 
pomological investigations for the United States Department of Ag- 
riculture and a well-known authority on the potato, has kindly in- 
formed me that the Burbank potato at present: is confined very 
largely to the northwestern portion of the United States; that it is 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 233 

add $3,000,000 for fruit, we obtain $20,000,000 whicli 
we may consider to be a rough estimate of Barbank's total 
contribution to the annual crop values of the United 
States. This sum is only an approximation to the truth ; 
it may be too small and it may be too large ; but even if 
we were to multiply it by ten, it would still fall far short 
of the $600,000,000 which is the estimated crop value of 
Marquis wheat for the year 1918. 

XXYII. Burbanh's Quality Wheat as a Possible Com- 
petitor of Marquis 

Having heard that Luther Burbank was introducing 
some new varieties of wheat, I wrote to the great plant 
breeder for particulars concerning them. Mr. Burbank, 
in reply, kindly informed me that he had added my name 
to the sixty-five thousand others who receive his catalogues 
and circulars, and called attention to what he described 
as " my best wheat " to which he has given the name 
Quality, He also communicated to me the interesting in- 
formation that Quality 'Ms a derivative of Prize Marquis " 
and that it was '^ secured by many years' selections for 
certain qualities in which our California wheats are lack- 
ing." It is worthy of note that Marquis which was orig- 
inally selected by Dr. Saunders at Ottawa should have been 

grown to a slight extent in Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Colorado, the 
Kusset type prevailing in Nebraska and Colorado; that it is chiefly 
grown in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys of California and 
in some portions of Oregon and Washington; and that probably it 
does not exceed 5 per cent, of the total potato crop of the United 
States. Mr. Burbank himself in his 1918 New Creations and 
Special New Selections states that more than 500,000,000 bushels 
of the Burbank potato have been raised during the past forty years. 
This is a magnificent total, but assuming that the average price has 
been as much as 80 cents per bushel, the crop value of the 500,000,000 
bushels of Burbank potatoes to the growers has been $400,000,000, 
or two-thirds of $600,000,000, the estimated crop value for Marquis 
wheat for the single year 1918. 



234 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

so long studied and made the basis of further selections by 
Mr. Burbank in so distant a State as California. 

In a circular called Burhan¥s 1918 New Standard 
Grains, issued from bis Experimental Farms at Santa 
Rosa, Burbank, under tbe bead of: A ^N'ew Productive 
White Wheat — " Quality,'' makes the following state- 
ments : " This season I offer a superior, early, hard 
white wheat suited to all climates wherever wheat can be 
grown; as a Summer wheat in cold far Northern climates 
and as a Winter crop in the United States and most wheat- 
growing countries. It is specially adapted also to short 
seasons, arid soils, and dry climates. A superior milling 
wheat which makes the best light sweet nutritious bread 
and pastry. . . . This early hardy Quality wheat which 
I offer this season will not yield as much as some of the 
coarse macaroni wheats in some warm, dry sections, but 
for general culture, with its unusual hardiness and extreme 
earliness, uniformity, superior milling and baking quali- 
ties, it stands alone. It most resembles in all these re- 
spects the hard I^orthem Prize Marquis but has a vitreous 
white berry of quite different appearance and quality and 
of about the same specific gravity as of granite." Quality 
is offered to the public at $5 per pound or $45 for 10 
pounds, i. e., at the rate of $270 per bushel, so that it is 
doubtless the most expensive wheat in the world. Only 
as its price goes down can farmers hope to purchase a suf- 
ficient quantity of seed to cultivate it on a large scale and 
thus make it an article of commerce so far as the miller 
and baker are concerned. ^^ 

12 In his Burhank's 1918 "New Standard Grains, Mr. Burbank 
advertises for sale two other varieties of wheat in addition to Qual- 
ity: Quantity offered in 1918 for the first time and Super first 
offered in 1917. Quantity is on sale at the same prices as Quality, 
i.e., $2.75 for 0.5 pound, $5 for 1 pound, $23 for 5 pounds, $45 for 
10 pounds, $1 for 10 sample heads, and 60 cents for 5 sample heads. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 235 

Mr. Burbank, in support of tlie claims whicli lie makes 
for Quality, publisiies the results of a chemical analysis 
and of a baking test of the flour, and for the rest leaves 
us to rely upon his reputation for producing new and use- 
ful plants. But Mr. Burbank is only just beginning his 
work as an introducer of new wheats and the writer can- 
not help feeling that in penning his advertisement of 
Quality he allowed his enthusiasm for his new cereal to 
be mixed a little too freely with his ink. Every one knows 
that Marquis is a hard wheat, but when Mr. Bui^bank tells 
us that Quality which has been selected from it, has ker- 
nels " with about the same specific gravity as granite," . 
surely he is addressing us in the language of hyperbole. 
Of two equal-sized sacks, one filled with Quality wheat 
and the other with crushed granite, which would the reader 
prefer to carry, were he obliged to make a choice ? 

Mr. Burbank tells us that Quality is " suited for all 
climates wherever wheat can be grown, as a Summer wheat 
in cold far ^N'orthern climates and as a Winter crop in 
the United States and most wheat growing countries"; 
and all this we are supposed to accept on Mr. Burbank's 
unsupported ipse dixit. He is silent in regard to the 

Quantity is thus described : " It is a tremendous yielder, having 
long, drooping, well-filled heads laden with extra large, fat, light- 
colored berries. My small field of Quantity has been the wonder and 
surprise of the season. It has a stiff four-foot straw which stands 
up bravely with its long, heavy, well-filled heads averaging on ordi- 
nary soils five to six and sometimes seven inches in length. No 
good wheat yields more than Quantity. It is remarkably true to 
type and yields nearly twice as much as the ordinary wheats. 
Quantity is medium early and will prove its tremendous yielding 
abilities in any except the most Northern latitude." This brief 
description contains no statement as to whether Quantity is hard or 
soft, a spring variety or a fall one, and it contains no reference to 
milling and baking qualities, shelling, disease resistance, and so 
forth. Super wheat was offered this year at $3 for 1 pound, $18 for 
10 pounds, etc. ; but no more seed is just now available as the stock 
which was on hand has all been sold. 



236 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

exact data of his field tests and affords us no evidence that 
Quality has ever been compared with Eed Fife, Marquis, 
Bobs, Prelude, Preston, and Bluestem, etc., outside of 
California in the great spring-wheat region of the United 
States and Canada or with the various winter wheats east 
of the Eocky Mountains where the climate is mild enough 
to permit of their cultivation. Such comparisons may 
have actually been made under varied climatic conditions 
all over Canada and the United States; but, if so, the 
writer has not heard of them. Is it not possible that Mr. 
Burbank has confined his experiments to the one State of 
California and that in claiming that Quality is suited for 
all climates, is in reality simply expressing a pious hope 
which, while it may some day be fulfilled, has not as yet 
been justified by a series of critical tests ? 

Burbank's Quality is a white wheat. However, the de- 
mand in the British market, so far as Canada is concerned, 
is for wheat having a good red color ; and there is there- 
fore a sound commercial reason for encouraging the pro- 
duction of such red wheats as Marquis and Red Fife in 
the west of Canada rather than white wheats. It is there- 
fore certain that, even if Quality were suited to the cli- 
mate of the Prairie Provinces, there would be considerable 
opposition to its introduction into this area on the part of 
grain merchants, millers, and farmers alike. 

That Mr. Burbank, with his forty years of experience 
in successful plant breeding should, sooner or later, intro- 
duce some very desirable new varieties of wheat is only 
what one is justified in expecting of him; and doubtless 
Quality is an improvement on the wheat gxown in various 
localities, particularly in California. However, there 
does not at present appear to be any good reason for be- 
lieving that Quality will ever replace Marquis either in 




Fig. 36. Dr. Charles Saunders in a field of Marquis wheat. Ottawa, 
August, 1918. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 237 

the Prairie Provinces of Canada or in the north-central 
spring-wheat region of the United States. 

XXVIII. Biographical Sketch of the Discoverer of 
Marquis 

Dr. Charles E. Saunders, the discoverer of Marquis 
wheat, was born at London, Ontario, in the year 1867 ; and 
he is therefore a Canadian by birth. He received his early 
education at the London Collegiate Institute, and from 
there proceeded to the University of Toronto, where he 
graduated as a Bachelor of Arts, with Honors in Science, 
in 1888. He then studied for three further years at the 
Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, where he earned 
his doctorate by taking the degree of Ph.D. in 1891. This 
record shows that Dr. Saunders received a first-class scien- 
tific education. In 1892, Dr. Saunders married Miss 
Mary Blackwell of Deer Park, Ontario. From 1892 to 
1893 he was a Professor at the Central University in Ken- 
tucky. In addition to his attraction toward science. Dr. 
Saunders had, and still has, a great love of music ; and he 
became a masterly player on the flute and took a keen 
pleasure in song. There was danger that music and not 
science would claim him for his life's work. For some 
years he devoted his entire attention to voice culture and 
to this end studied both in •IN'ew York and in London, Eng- 
land. He became musical instructor at Havergal College, 
Toronto, and then at the St. Margaret's Ladies College in 
the same city. Subsequently he led the choir at the Do- 
minion Methodist Church at Ottawa; and it was during 
this period that he assisted his father in the work of im- 
proving wheats. This return to applied science resulted 
in Dr. Saunders being appointed Dominion Cerealist in 
1903. 



238 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

There may be some who have been inclined to suppose 
that the discovery of Marquis was nothing more than a 
lucky accident; but such a supposition is entirely errone- 
ous. The details of the career of Dr. Saunders, as out- 
lined above, show us that the discoverer of Marquis was a 
man who had had a thorough preparation for his work by 
studying for several years at two of the best universities 
on this continent. His training had given him the neces- 
sary insight into the problem of wheat-breeding, mastery 
of method, resource for difficulties, and unfailing patience. 
In the winter of 1903-04 when he was making the chewing 
tests which led to the discovery of Marquis, Dr. Saunders 
was no mere boy, for he was 36 years old. His salary at 
that time was indeed small — only $100 per month — 
but he was rich in the possession of faculties which had 
been taught to do his bidding and endowed with the cour- 
age and determination of a man in the prime of life. How 
well he employed those faculties is now a matter of history. 
In his own domain of breeding cereals he has won the 
place of a king. 

XXIX. Governing Bodies and Scientific Research 

When the Universities of Toronto and Johns Hopkins 
were giving instruction to Dr. Saunders, they little thought 
that, in the course of a few years, the work of one of their 
quietest and least obtrusive students would lead to the pro- 
duction of increased wealth in North America more than 
sufficient to defray the annual cost of their growth and 
maintenance; but, by training men of the stamp of Dr. 
Saunders, those institutions have fully justified their exist- 
ence; and, in return, they need not hesitate to claim the 
heartiest support of the public. In the story of the dis- 
covery of Marquis wheat, governing bodies everywhere 
may find a striking illustration of the wisdom of giving 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 239 

adequate financial and moral support to investigations di- 
rected toward the welfare of the State. The starvation 
of scientific research is truly the worst economy of which 
a statesman can be guilty. 

XXX. Other Work of Dr. Saunders 

In addition to his work upon wheat, Dr. Saunders, as 
Dominion Cerealist, has been engaged in making selections 
of, and in breeding, new types of other cereals and of peas. 

From Mensury barley (of supposed Manchurian origin) 
Dr. Saunders made a selection called Manchurian which 
is a fine six-rowed bearded variety with an excellent yield. 
It has been grown successfully on a large scale in various 
parts of Canada. Another selection known as 0. A, C. 
No. 21 was made by Professor C. A. Zavitz at the Ontario 
Agricultural College from a barley which he obtained 
under the name of Mandscheuri. These two varieties 
have added much to the productivity of barley in this 
country. ^^ 

13 Mandscheuri barley was imported from Russia by the Ontario 
Agricultural College in the spring of 1889. It was found to be more 
productive than any of the other six-rowed barleys tested: it gave 
an average yield of 9.3 bushels per acre per annum over the Common 
Six-rowed barley as an average for fifteen years ; and it was therefore 
introduced into general cultivation in Ontario. In 1905, Professor 
'Zavitz pointed out that barley production in Ontario had risen from 
24.85 bushels for the ten-year period 1885-94 inclusive to 29.3 
bushels per acre for the ten-year period 1895-1904 inclusive; and 
he attributed the general rise in productivity of 41/3 bushels per 
acre to the substitution of Mandscheuri barley for lesser yielding 
varieties. After calculating the increased value which was accruing 
to the Ontario barley crop through the raising of Mandscheuri, he 
asked of the public and the legislators, without whose intelligent sup- 
port the work of agricultural colleges cannot properly be carried on, 
the following very pertinent question: "From these results, does 
it not appear as though the introduction of Mandscheuri barley by 
the Ontario Agricultural College has been worth to the Province of 
Ontario within the past ten years an annual money value equal to 



240 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Dr. Saimders is now studying a large number of hul- 
less and hooded (beardless) types of barley, most of wbicb 
have been cross-bred. He is endeavoring to produce a 
first-class barley with the hull attached but free from awns. 
Hulless barley is already being raised to a certain extent 
in Alberta for the feeding of pigs, but Dr. Saunders ex- 
pects that some of his new sorts will prove superior to the 
varieties now in cultivation. If hulless barley were 
raised in sufiicient quantity, it would obviously be of con- 
siderable value for human food, for it would not require 
so lengthy a preparation as the hulled varieties at present 
employed for this purpose. Another interesting barley 
which Dr. Saunders is now introducing is called Albert 
It is of cross-bred origin and extremely early in ripening. 
It will not be of general utility where a very high yield 
is a first consideration but may become valuable where 
the growing season is a short one. 

Dr. Saunders has originated a new hulless oat which 
he has called the Liberty Oat. It threshes out free from 
the hard and tough glumes which enclose the grains of 
every common kind of oat, and will therefore probably 
be much appreciated for feeding chickens and young pigs. 
It also makes oatmeal of very fine quality, and Dr. Saun- 
ders believes that it has a richer flavor than any of the 
commercial oatmeal products which he has tasted. 

The Arthur pea and the Mackay pea were produced 
many years ago under the direction of Dr. Saunders' fa- 
ther. The Arthur is now making good headway among 
growers. It is one of the earliest field peas and is, there- 
fore, advantageous for many districts in Canada where 
earliness is a desideratum. The Mackay was named by 
Dr. Saunders' father after Mr. Angus Mackay who for 

more than fifteen times the entire cost of the College?" Yide C. A. 
Zavitz, The Results of Field Experiments with Farm Crops, Ontario 
Agricultural College, Bulletin No. 140, 1905, p. 7. 




Fig. 39. Dr. Charles Saunders crossing wheats at the Central Ex- 
perimental Farm, Ottawa. After pollination the heads are wound 
with cheese-cloth and then tied loosely to sticks. 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 241 

many years was the Superintendent of the Dominion Ex- 
perimental Farm at Indian Head. It is somewhat later 
than the Arthur pea but is still more productive. It has 
been grown at the experimental farms for several years and 
has been recently re-selected with a view to its being sent 
out to the public. In addition to studying the Arthur and 
the Mackay peas originated by his father, Dr. Saunders 
is selecting a considerable number of pea types of his own 
breeding. It is to be expected that at least some of them 
will eventually prove of sufficient value for introduction to 
growers; but the work of selecting and testing them for 
their yield and other qualities has not yet been brought to 
a conclusion. 

From what has been already said in the foregoing pages 
in respect to cereals and peas only, it is evident that there 
is still very much to be done by the Department of Agri- 
culture and by provincial institutions in adapting culti- 
vated plants to the diverse soils and climates of the broad 
Dominion. Judging by the experience of the past, there 
is every reason to believe that Canada will be well repaid 
for any future expenditures of time, money, energy, and 
brain power, which she may make in carrying out this 
work. 

Dr. Saunders has influenced agriculture not only di- 
rectly through the new cereals which he has introduced but 
also indirectly, through his Keports and Bulletins pub- 
lished by the Department of Agriculture, and through his 
scientific papers. Other cerealists in Canada, the United 
States, England, Australia, etc., have read these contribu- 
tions to science, and have been stimulated in their work 
accordingly. Some of Dr. Saunders' research methods 
have now been adopted by other investigators. 

The following is a list of publications on cereals made 
by Dr. Charles E. Saunders : 



242 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Reports on Cereals in the Annual Reports of the Dominion Ex- 
perimental Farms, 1903 to 1917. 
Bulletins issued by the Dominion Experimental Earms : ^* 
No. 45. Emmer and Spelt. 
No. 50. The Grades of Wheat. Crop of 190^. 
No. 57. Quality in Wheat. 
No. 60. The Grades of Wheat. Crop of 1907. 
Circular, issued by the Dominion Experimental Earms : 

Preston and Other Early -ripening Wheats. (March, 1908.) 
Papers read before the American Breeders' Association, and 
published at Washington, D. C, in the Proceedings: 
A Natural Hyhrid in Wheat in Vol. I, 1905. 
The Cross-fertilizing of Cereals in Vol. II, 1908. 
Papers read before the Canadian Seed Growers' Association, 
and published at Ottawa by the Dominion Government : 
Quality in Wheat (Third Annual Meeting), 1906. 
The Production of Improved Varieties of Cereals (Eifth 

Annual Meeting), 1909. 
Distribution of Seed at Experimental Farms (Eighth Annual 

Meeting), 1912. 
Difficulties Encountered in the Propagation of Pure Seed 
(Tenth Annual Meeting), 1914. 
The Inheritance of Strength in Wheat, Journal of Agricul- 
tural Science, 1909, page 218. 
Wheat Breeding in Canada, read before the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science at Winnipeg, Manitoba, 
1909. 
The Inheritance of Awns in Wheat, published in the Report of 
the Third International Conference on Genetics, London, 
1906. (Published by the Royal Horticultural Society.) 
Production de Varieties de BIS de haute valeur houlangere, pub- 
lished in the Report of the Eourth International Conference 
on Genetics, Paris, 1911. 
Cereal Breeding on the Dominion Experimental Farms during 
the past Decade, Transactions of the Royal Society of Can- 
ada for 1913. 

14 The second sections of Nos. 50, 57, and 60 were written by Dr. 
Frank T. Shutt, the Dominion chemist. 



DISCOVEEY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 



243 



XXXI. The Crop Values of Marquis in Canada and the 
United States 

In Canada the crop value of Marquis for the years 1917 
and 1918 can be calculated roughly without much diffi- 
culty. In both these years at least 80 per cent, of the 
wheat produced in the Prairie Provinces was Marquis/^ 
and the average price received by farmers for the crop of 
both years was, is, and will be almost exactly two dollars 
a bushel. ^^ The data for the required calculations to- 
gether with the results are embodied in the following 
Table: 1^ 





Crop Values of Marquis Wheat in Canada 




Total crop 


Per- 










of wheat 


cen- 


Amount 




Crop 


YpflT 


in the three 


tage 


of 


Price 


values 




Prairie 


of 


Marquis 


per 


of 




Provinces 


Mar- 


in bushels 


bushel 


Marquis 




in bushels 


quis 








1917 


212,000,000 


80 


169,600,000 


$2.00 


$339,200,000 


1918 


162,000,000 80 


129,600,000 


$2.00 


$259,200,000 



To the total given in the last column several millions of 
dollars should be added for the crop value of Marquis 
grown in Ontario, Quebec, etc. 

From the data at our disposal we may safely draw the 
conclusion that the crop value of Marquis for the whole 

15 Information kindly supplied by Mr. George Serls, the chief Grain 
Inspector for the Dominion of Canada. 

16 Information kindly supplied by Mr. Irvine, Assistant Secretary 
of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. 

17 The total crop of wheat in the Prairie Provinces for 1917 is that 
given in the Bulletin of Agricultural Statistics, Ottawa, Jan., 1918, 
and the crop for 1918 as estimated in September, 1918, at Winnipeg. 



244 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



of Canada was in 1917 at least $340,000,000, and in 1918 
at least $260,000,000. 

Let us now attempt to estimate the crop value of Mar- 
quis in the United States for the year 1917. The data 
for estimating the crop value of Marquis, in 1917, for 
the four chief spring-wheat States, together with the re- 
sults of the calculations, are given in the following 
Table: i« 



Crop Values of Marquis Wheat in the Four Spring-Wheat 
States in 1917 





Total crop 

of wheat 

in bushels 


Per- 
cen- 
tage 
of 
Mar- 
quis 


Amount 

of 
Marquis 
in bushels 


Price 
per 
bush- 
el 


Crop 

value 

of 

Marquis 


Minnesota 
N. Dakota 
S. Dakota 
Montana . 


57,965,000 
56,000,000 
52,024,000 
17,963,000 


46 
43 
43 

45 


26,663,900 
24,080,000 
22,370,320 

8,083,350 


$2 
$2 
$2 
$2 


$53,327,800 
$48,160,000 
$44,740,640 
$16,166,700 


Totals .. 


183,952,000 




81,197,570 




$162,395,140 



Prom the foregoing Table, it is clear that the crop value 
of Marquis for the year 1917, in the four chief spring- 
wheat States alone, amounted to the large sum of $162,- 
000,000. But Marquis in 1917 was also grown on many 
acres in several other States. Making allowance for this, 
the crop value of Marquis for the United States as a whole, 
in 1917, was upwards of $170,000,000. 

18 The totals of the crops of wheat in the four States are as given 
in the December Monthly Crop Report, Washington, 1917, p. 121. 
The percentages of the whole crop contributed by Marquis is given 
in the August Monthly Crop Report, 1918, p. 95. The exact prices 
per bushel, which vary about $2, are given in the December Monthly 
Crop Report, 1917. 



DISCOVEEY OF MARQUIS WHEAT ^45 

Let us now turn to the present year, 1918. On Sep- 
tember 1, the spring-wheat crop was forecasted at 342,- 
855,000 bushels of which about 257,000,000 bushels were 
forecasted for Minnesota, the two Dakotas and Montana. ^^ 
These four States were also estimated to produce 15,050,- 
000 bushels of winter wheat ^^ making with the spring 
wheat a grand total of 272,000,000 bushels. It has been 
estimated, however, that at least 65 per cent, of the total 
wheat crop of these four States consists of Marquis.^^ 
The amount of Marquis produced in the four chief spring- 
wheat States, therefore, is about 177,000,000 bushels. 
At the average fixed price of $2.00 a bushel, the crop value 
of this mass of wheat amounts to $354,000,000. But, 
this year, spring wheat has been grown in other States to 
the extent of 86,000,000 bushels ; and of this wheat a very 
large proportion has been Marquis, probably one-half. 
Making allowance for this, it appears safe to say that the 
crop value of Marquis for the United States as a whole, 
in 1918, is upwards of $370,000,000. 

One further calculation only remains to be made, 
namely, the crop value of Marquis in the whole spring- 
wheat region of IsTorth America for the years 1917 and 
1918. To make this calculation, all we need to do is to 
add the totals already obtained for Canada and the United 
States. The following Table contains these totals and 
their summations : 

Crop Value of Marquis in North America 





Canada 


United States 


Total Value 


1917 
1918 


$339,200,000 
$259,200,000 


$170,000,000 
$370,000,000 


$509,200,000 
$629,200,000 



i» October Monthly Crop Report, Washington, 1918. 

20 August Monthly Crop Report, Washington, 1918. 

21 Estimate sent to the writer by Mr. Carleton R. Ball, of the 
Ofl&ce of Cereal Investigation, Washington. 



246 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

From the Table it becomes evident that the total crop 
value of Marquis wheat in ISTorth America was upwards 
of $500,000,000 in 1917 and upwards of $600,000,000 
in 1918. It is to be doubted whether any other single 
variety of wheat ever had such a high crop value as this. 

Marquis wheat, as we have seen, originated in Canada 
and was first grown there on a large scale. It is inter- 
esting to note, however, that this year, 1918, more Mar- 
quis has been grown in the United States than in Canada. 
Whereas the Canadian crop of Marquis, owing to adverse 
weather conditions, was only about 130,000,000 bushels, 
that of the United States was upwards of 180,000,000 
bushels. As a consequence, the crop value of Marquis in 
the United States will this year, for the first time, con- 
siderably exceed that in Canada. 

The years 1917 and 1918 are war years, and the price 
of wheat is abnormally high. Soon after peace is de- 
clared, there can be little doubt that the price of wheat 
will decline and the yearly crop value of Marquis suffer 
accordingly. However, Marquis is still increasing in 
popularity with American farmers, and the acreage de- 
voted to spring wheat in North America is still being con- 
siderably extended. Even should pre-war prices again 
come to prevail, the annual crop value of Marquis will 
probably not fall below an average of $300,000,000 a year 
for some years at least. 

XXXII. The Increased Wealth Brought hy Marquis to 
the United States 

We shall now endeavor to make an estimate of the in- 
creased wealth which has accrued to the United States 
through the replacement of the older lesser-yielding varie- 
ties of wheat, such as Bluestem, Fife, and Velvet Chaff, 
by the newer variety from Canada. 



DISCOVEKY OF MAKQUIS WHEAT 247 

Let us first consider the year 1917 and limit our in- 
quiry to the single State of Minnesota. To what extent 
did Minnesota benefit financially in 1917 through grow- 
ing Marquis wheat ? The answer to this question can be 
obtained from the following data for which we are in- 
debted to the Bureau of Crop Estimates of the United 
States Department of Agriculture: 

DATA FOR MINNESOTA 

Total crop of wheat in 1917 57,965,000 bushels.22 

Average price of wheat per bushel 2 dollars.^* 



Percentages 


of the Total Crop for 


the Chief Wheat Varieties 2* 




Mar- 
quis 

Per 

cent. 


Vel- 
vet 
Chaff 

Per 

cent. 


Blue- 
stem 

Per 

cent. 


Du- 
rum 

Per 

cent. 


Fife 

Per 
cent. 


Win-l 
ter ' 

Per 

cent. 


Other 

Per 
cent. 


1917 

1914 


46.0 
3.0 


26.0 
30.0 


18.0 
52.0 


3.0 
2.0 


3.0 

7.0 


3.0 

2.0 


1.0 

4.0 



Yield of the Chief Wheat Varieties in 


Bushels 


per Acre ^^ 




Mar- 
quis 

Bush. 


Vel- 
vet 
Chaff 

Bush. 


Blue- 
stem 

Bush. 


Du- 
rum 

Bush. 


Fife 
Bush. 


Win- 
ter 

Bush. 


Other 
Bush. 


1917 


17.2 


16.0 


14.0 


15.5 


15.0 


20.0 


14.0 



Let us now proceed with our calculation. Since 46 per 
cent, of the 57,965,000 bushels of wheat produced in Min- 
nesota in 1917 was Marquis, Marquis contributed to the 
total wheat crop of the State 26,66'3,900 bushels. 

Now let us suppose that the percentages which each 

22 and 23 December Monthly Crop Eeport, 1917, Washington, p. 121. 
24 and 25 August Monthly Crop Report, 1918, Washington, p. 95. 



248 



ESSAYS ON "WHEAT 



variety of wheat contributed to the crop of Minnesota in 
1917 was the same as it was in 1914, i. e., at the time when 
Marquis had only just made its advent in the State, and 
let us distribute the 26,663,900 bushels which Marquis 
produced in 1917 among all these varieties in accordance 
with these 1914 percentages. Then of the 26,663,900 
bushels : 

Marquis taking 3 per cent, will receive 799,917 bushels 

Velvet ChafF. . .taking 30 per cent, will receive 7,999,170 bushels 

Bluestem taking 52 per cent, will receive 13,865,228 bushels 

Durum taking 2 per cent, will receive 533,278 bushels 

Fife taking 7 per cent, will receive 1,866,473 bushels 

Winter Wheat, .taking 2 per cent, will receive 533,278 bushels 

Other Wheat. . .taking 4 per cent, will receive 1,066,556 bushels 

Total 26,663,900 bushels 

These masses of wheat, however, were produced by Mar- 
quis wheat-plants which had a yield in 1917 of 17.2 bushels 
per acre. Had equivalent masses of wheat been produced 
by Bluestem, Fife, etc., these masses would have been 
smaller, because these varieties in 1917 yielded less than 





Wheat 


Yields 


Adjust- 






assigned 


in 1917 


ments 


Remarks 




Bushels 


Bushels 
per acre 


Bushels 




Marquis .... 


799,917 


17.2 


799,917 


no change 


Velvet Chaff. 


7,999,170 


16.0 


7,441,088 


decrease 


Bluestem . . . 


13,865,228 


14.0 


11,285,651 


decrease 


Durum 


533,278 


15.5 


480,570 


decrease 


Fife 


1,866,473 


15.0 


1,627,738 


decrease 


Winter wheat 


533,278 


20.0 


620,091 


increase 


Other wheat. 


1,066,556 


14.0 


868,127 


decrease 


Totals .... 


26,663,900 




23,123,182 


decrease 



DISCOVERY OF MARQTJIS WHEAT 249 

Marquis. Let us find out, therefore, what the masses of 
wheat just distributed among the various varieties would 
have been, had they been actually yielded in 191 Y by the 
varieties to which they have been assigned (vide Table). 

The difference between the totals just given is 3,540,Y18 
bushels. We thus see that if, in 1917, the 26,663,900 
bushels of Marquis had been replaced by wheat from the 
various varieties in the proportions in which they were 
grown in 1914, the Minnesota wheat crop of 1917 would 
have been reduced by 3,540,718 bushels. Instead of its 
being 57,965,000 bushels, it would have been 54,424,282 
bushels. 

Summing up the results of the foregoing calculation, we 
may say that the increase in the raising of Marquis wheat 
in Minnesota in the last three seasons has resulted in a 
gain in the 1917 crop of 3,541,000 bushels. Taking two 
dollars per bushel as the average price, we are justified 
in concluding that the introduction of Mc^rquis wheat into 
Minnesota brought about a gain in wealth in 1917 of up- 
wards of 7,000,000 dollars. 

By making use of the appropriate crop statistics,^^ and 
by employing the method of investigation just explained, 
gains corresponding to that just found for Minnesota, can 
be found for the two Dakotas. 

So far as Montana is concerned, the statistics for the 
relative contributions of the different wheat varieties to 
the total crop of 1914 are not available. However, we 
know that Montana in 1917 produced 17,963,000 bushels 
of wheat, of which 45 per cent, or 8,083,000 bushels was 
Marquis; and we also know that the estimated yields of 
the spring- wheat varieties in bushels per acre in 1917 were 
as follows: Marquis 9.3, Velvet Chaff 7.5, Bluestem 6.5, 
Durum 9, and Fife 7.5.^^ This allows us to conclude 

26 and 27 Loo. oit. 



260 



ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



that had Velvet Chaff, Bluestem, and Fife been grown 
in Montana in 1917 instead of Marquis, the yield of spring 
wheat would have been lessened by about 1,500,000 bush- 
els. Taking this into consideration, we may assume that 
the increase in the growing of Marquis in Montana since 
1914 caused an increase in the 1917 crop of, let us say, at 
least 1,100,000 bushels. 

Let us now summarize the estimated wealth gained in 
the four chief spring-wheat States, in 1917, through the 
increased cultivation of Marquis since 1914. 

Gams in Wealth hy Growing Marquis in the Four Chief 
Spring-wheat States 











Financial 




Total 


Gain by 




gain by 




crop 


growing 


Price 


growing 




for 1917 


Marquis 


per 


Marquis, 




in bushels 


in bushels 


bushel 


in dollars 


Minnesota 


57,965,000 


3,540,718 


$2 


$7,081,436 


N.Dakota. . 


56,000,000 


1,619,380 


$2 


$3,238,760 


S. Dakota. . 


52,024,000 


3,755,396 


$2 


$7,510,792 


Montana . . 


17,963,000 


1,100,000 


$2 


$2,200,000 


Totals . . 


183,952,000 


10,015,494 


$2 


$20,030,988 



We thus perceive that, through increasing the amount 
of Marquis grown, from about 4 per cent, in 1914 to about 
44 per cent, in 1917, the gain of wealth in the four chief 
spring-wheat States in 1917 was upwards of 10,000,000 
bushels of wheat valued at 20,000,000 dollars. The great 
campaign which was carried on by American millers and 
seedsmen in the years 1913 and 1914 for the rapid intro- 
duction of Marquis into the spring-wheat region of the 
United States, has therefore soon borne financial fruit; 
but it has had a consequence of still greater importance : it 
resulted in making at least 10,000,000 more bushels of 
American wheat available for the Allies in the Great War 



DISCOVEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 251 

at the very moment when the late food crisis attained its 
climax. 

The increased wealth accruing to the United States this 
year, 1918, through the increase in the sowing of Mar- 
quis since 1914, cannot be exactly calculated as the neces- 
sary statistics will not be available for some months. 
However, Mr. Carleton E. Ball, of the Office of Cereal 
Investigation at Washington, has estimated that Marquis 
this year will form 65 per cent, of the wheat crop in the 
chief spring-wheat States and possibly a little more.^^ 
We thus see that Marquis is making a gain of about 50 per 
cent, over 1917 by increased sowing. It is also estimated 
that this year the United States will produce about 90,- 
000,000 more bushels of spring-wheat than in 1917.^^ 
It is certain that a great proportion of these extra bushels 
will consist of Marquis. Taking all these facts into con- 
sideration, one appears to be justified in estimating the 
gain in wealth in the four chief spring-wheat States in 
1918, obtained by increasing the cultivation of Marquis 
since 1914, at upwards of 15,000,000 bushels valued at 
30,000,000 dollars. 

Any calculation of the full monetary worth of Marquis 
to the United States should include an allowance for the 
4 per cent, of Marquis already grown in the chief spring- 
wheat States in 1914 and another allowance for Marquis 
grown in States other than Minnesota, the two Dakotas, 
and Montana. These gains should be added on to those 
already recorded. However, they cannot be calculated as 
the necessary data concerning them are not available. 
We shall therefore ignore them and content ourselves with 
the following conclusion which surely must be a conserva- 
tive one. Through the replacement of lesser-yielding va- 

28 Estimate in a letter to the writer. 

29 Monthly Crop Report, Washington, August, 1918, p. 87. 



252 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

rieties of wheat, such as Bluestem, Fife, and Preston, by 
Marquis, the wealth of the United States has been in- 
creased: in 1917 by upwards of 10,000,000 bushels of 
wheat valued at $20,000,000, and in 1918 by upwards of 
15,000,000 bushels of wheat valued at $30,000,000. 

XXXIII. The Increased Wealth Brought hy Marquis to 

Canada 

In order to obtain a general statement of the increased 
wealth which has been added to western Canada by the in- 
troduction of Marquis, we may begin by assuming that the 
wheat grown on summer fallow (or similarly prepared 
land) represents half the total yield. ^^ It seems that 

30 The phrase similarly prepared land includes ( 1 ) new breaking 
and (2) land on which hoed crops, i.e., potatoes, Indian corn and 
roots, were raised the previous year. The proportion of summer fal- 
low or its equivalent is greatest in the districts which produce the 
most wheat, i. e., central and southern Manitoba, central and south- 
ern Saskatchewan, and southern Alberta. In those same areas Mar- 
quis is grown almost exclusively and in many of the districts it 
would now be almost impossible to purchase a single car-load of 
Ked Fife. In districts like central Alberta (often called northern, 
but central on the map) where the rainfall is heavier, summer fal- 
lowing is much less general but there is a considerable amount of 
new breaking. 

Very generally in western Canada the farm is divided into three 
sections one of which is sown on summer fallow, another on stubble, 
while the third is summer fallowed. Thus for all purposes 33.3 per 
cent, of the land is fallow and 66.6 is available for sowing. There- 
fore half the acreage sown is on summer fallow. On summer fallow 
the crop is usually from 50 to 100 per cent, greater than that on 
stubble, or, in other words, about three-quarters of the crop is pro- 
duced on summer fallow. From the above considerations it is ob- 
vious that the assumption given in the text that the wheat grown 
on summer fallow {or similarly prepared land) represents half the 
total yield is a conservative one. 

Since summer fallowing is not usually practiced in North Dakota, 
South Dakota, and Minnesota to the same extent that it is in west- 
ern Canada, it may be of interest to remark that summer fallowing 
is found to be advantageous in western Canada for the following 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 253 

about 80 per cent, of the wheat grown on summer fallow 
in the West is Marquis,^^ and that on summer fallow Mar- 
quis yields at least 20 per cent, more wheat in bushels 
than Eed Eife which it has replaced. ^^ 'Now let us sup- 
pose that we are dealing with a crop of 200,000,000 
bushels, which, as a matter of fact, is less than the aver- 
age for the last five years. ^^ One half of this, i. e., 

reasons: (1) There is insufl5cient rainfall to produce a maximum 
crop with the rain of the current season only. Summer fallowing, 
by preventing weeds from growing and exhausting the moisture, and 
by keeping the surface of the ground pulverized and thereby check- 
ing evaporation, largely conserves the moisture of the one season 
and carries it over to the next. ( 2 ) The weeds are controlled. On 
summer fallow the weed seeds at the surface of the soil germinate 
and then the weeds are killed by cultivation. In this way summer 
fallowing, in a normal season, practically insures a good crop. On 
the other hand, sowing on stubble land is somewhat precarious. It 
costs relatively little to sow on stubble, for such land is easily pre- 
pared, whereas summer fallow requires to be worked the whole sea- 
son. Therefore in good seasons, even if the yield is reduced as com- 
pared with summer fallow, stubble sowing is very profitable, if not 
the most profitable method of farming. However, in bad seasons, 
stubble farming is sometimes a total failure. 

31 Mr. George Serls, the Chief Grain Inspector for the Dominion of 
Canada, has kindly informed me that, from estimates made during 
inspections. Marquis forms at least 80 per cent, of the wheat crop of 
the West. It is therefore only reasonable to conclude that at least 
80 per cent, of the wheat crop grown on summer fallow, where Mar- 
quis does so well, is Marquis. 

32 This is a conservative estimate. Cf. data given in Section X on 
Long-period Tests for Earliness and Yield. 

33 The average annual wheat crop for western Canada (Manitoba, 
Saskatchewan, and Alberta) during the last five years has been 
233,000,000 bushels and for the whole of Canada 256,000,000 bushels; 
but the wheat area for the whole country has increased from 11,- 
015,000 acres in 1913 to 16,080,800 acres in 1918 and is still being 
extended, so that it is to be expected that during the next five years 
the average annual wheat crop will show a considerable increase over 
that for the last five years. The area seeded to wheat in western 
Canada in 1918 was stated by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics on 
June 12 to be 15,196,300 acres. The rest of Canada, therefore, this 
year has only 884,500 acres under wheat. The following are the 



254 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

100,000,000, will be on summer fallow. Eighty per cent, 
of this will consist of Marquis, i. e., the Marquis wheat 
will be represented by 80,000,000 bushels. If we take 
20 per cent, of this as the increase in the crop due to grow- 
ing Marquis instead of Red Pife, the wealth added to the 
country owing to the introduction of Marquis would be 
16,000,000 bushels. In unfavorable seasons, when Rust 
or early frost do much damage, the advantage of the more 
quickly ripening Marquis over the later ripening Red 
Fife would be even greater. In the year 1915 the wheat 
crop attained a record for this country. The final figures, 
according to Mr. Milner, a former president of the Winni- 
peg Grain Exchange, were 376,448,400 bushels.^* Using 
the same basis of calculation as before, the additional har- 
vest due to growing Marquis instead of Red Fife in 1915, 
had Marquis been as widely grown then as now, would 
have been upwards of 30,000,000 bushels. As a matter 
of fact it was probably quite 20,000,000 bushels. It seems 
safe to suppose that, from now onwards, the additional 
harvest, due to growing Marquis instead of other wheats 
which it has replaced, will be on the average from 16,- 
000,000 to 25,000,000 bushels per annum.^^ 

official figures for the wheat crop for the last five years given in 
bushels : 

Western Canada All Canada 

1913 209,262,000 231,717,000 

1914 140,958,000 161,280,000 

1915 360,187,000 393,542,600 

1916 242,314,000 262,781,000 

1917 211,953,100 233,742,850 

Vide Canada Year Book, Department of Trade and Commerce, Ot- 
tawa, 1915, pp. 162-165; 1916-17, pp. 192-193; and the Monthly 
Bulletin of Agricultural Statistics, Department of Trade and Com- 
merce, Census and Statistics Office, Ottawa, Jan., 1918, pp. 4, 10-12. 

34 W. E. Milner, The President's Address, Eighth Annual Re- 
port (new series) of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, presented to the 
Annual Meeting held September 13, 1916, p. 24. 

35 There can be little doubt that the replacement of Red Fife by 



DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 255 

Canada, according to the Hon. W. J. Hanna, formerly 
Food Controller of the Dominion, is the most extravagant 
consumer of wheat of all the countries of the world. The 
consumption per capita for every man, woman, and child 
for food purposes of all sorts, including the feeding of 
animals, has been 9 bushels per annum. ^^ It is therefore 
clear that the addition to our wheat crop of from 16,000,- 
000 to 25,000,000 bushels per annum, owing to the dis- 
covery and introduction of Marquis, would provide all the 
bread and other wheat requirements for an additional 
population in Canada of upwards of 2,000,000 people. 

The price of wheat, as every one knows, has varied much 
in the last ten years but, taking the value of wheat as only 
70 cents a bushel, the wealth being added to western Can- 
ada through the replacement of other wheats by Marquis 
is from $11,200,000 to $17,500,000 per annum; ^7 and 
just now, under war conditions, this sum must be multi- 
plied by three. ^^ Within a few decades, at this rate, Mar- 
Marquis which, owing to its earliness in ripening and its high yield, 
is more suited to conditions in western Canada than its predecessor, 
has done much to encourage the breaking of new land on farms al- 
ready established and also to increase the number of new farms by 
stimulating the immigration of experienced farmers. This effect of 
Marquis is imponderable and cannot be expressed in bushels or dollars 
per annum; but if it could be, no doubt it would add considerably 
to the statistical estimate of the value of Marquis to this country. 

36 The Canadian Food Bulletin, No. 9, Jan. 26, 1918, p. 2. An 
endeavor is now being made to reduce the human consumption of 
wheat to 5.4 bushels per capita per annum. 

37 The crop in western Canada for the year 1918 has been esti- 
mated at 162,000,000 bushels, i.e., 71,000,000 bushels below the 
average for the five previous years. The increment due to the re- 
placement of Red Fife by Marquis has been only 13,000,000 bushels; 
but, as the price of wheat now averages about $2.00 per bushel, this 
mass of wheat is worth $26,000,000. In 1917 the increment was 
upwards of 16,000,000 bushels valued at $32,000,000. 

38 The average price per bushel received by Canadian farmers for 
the crops each year from 1910 onwards was as follows: 



256 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

quis wheat will put into our farmers' pockets an extra 
gain of hundreds of millions of dollars, an amount of 
money which would he more than sufficient to paj for all 
the education given in the Public Schools, the High 
Schools, the Agricultural Colleges, and the Universities 
of the whole of western Canada. Even if we take the 
very conservative estimate of $15,000,000 per annum as 
the increased wealth Marquis is bringing into Canada, 
and disregard every other consideration, we obtain suffi- 
cient evidence to convince ourselves of the amazing success 
of the Canadian Government in its wheat-breeding ex- 
periments. Well may this country be proud of its achieve- 
ments in this direction and especially proud of Dr. Charles 
E. Saunders, whose skill and patience triumphed over all 
the difficulties that presented themselves and who, in a 
remarkably short time after his appointment as Dominion 
Cerealist, gave to the farmer the great gift of Marquis 
wheat. There are but few men in Canada who can look 
the whole world in the face and honestly say that by their 
efforts they have enriched their country by at least $15,- 

Crops prodnioed in Price Crops produced in Price 

1910 $0.75 1914 $1.30 

1911 $0.65 1915 $0.90 

1912 $0.65 1916 $1.25 

1913 . $0.70 1917 $2.00 

By an order of the Board of Grain Supervisors of Canada, the price 

of wheat for the 1917 crop was fixed as follows: 

for No. 1 Northern $2.21 

for No. 2 Northern $2.18 

for No. 3 Northern $2.15 

This information was kindly supplied to the writer by Mr. Irvine, 

Assistant Secretary of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. 

By another order of the Board of Grain Supervisors of Canada, the 

price of wheat for the 1918 crop (August 26, 1918, until August 31, 

1919) was fixed as follows: 

for No. 1 Northern $2,241/3 

for No. 2 Northern. $2,211/3 

for No. 3 Northern $'2.l7i/3 



DISCOYEKY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 257 

000,000 a year. But such a man is Dr. Saunders, whose 
labors exemplify public service at its best. Long may 
be live to continue bis work for the good of Canada and 
of humanity. 

XXXIY. Summary 

The following are some of the more important conclu- 
sions which may be drawn from the foregoing pages : 

1. Marquis wheat was discovered and introduced by Dr. 
Charles E. Saunders of the Central Experimental Earm, 
Ottawa. 

2. Marquis is a hard red spring wheat with excellent 
milling and baking qualities. As compared with E.ed 
Eif e, it gives a higher yield and on the average is six days 
earlier in ripening. 

3. Marquis was discovered in 1903, first distributed to 
farmers in western Canada in 1909, and is now, 1918, the 
dominant spring wheat in both Canada and the United 
States. 

4. In E'orth America the yield of Marquis was: in 
1917, upwards of 250,000,000 bushels having a crop value 
of 500,000,000 dollars; and, in 1918, upwards of 300,- 
000,000 bushels having a crop value of 600,000,000 
dollars. 

5. In 1917, through the replacement of Red Eife by 
Marquis, Canada made a gain in wealth of upwards of 
16,000,000 bushels of wheat valued at 32,000,000 dollars. 

6. In 1917, through the replacement of Bluestem, Eife 
and Velvet Chaff by Marquis, the United States made a 
gain in wealth of upwards of 10,000,000 bushels of wheat 
valued at 20,000,000 dollars. 

7. In 1917, through the replacement of other lesser- 
yielding wheat varieties by Marquis, N^orth America made 
a gain in wealth of upwards of 26,000,000 bushels of 



258 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

wheat valued at 52,000,000 dollars. During the food 
crisis of 1917-1918, this mass of wheat was of very- 
great assistance to the Allies in their prosecution of the 
war. 

8. The Government of the Dominion of Canada pre- 
pared the way for the discovery of Marquis wheat hy 
establishing the Experimental Farms system in 1886, 
by encouraging cereal research, and by appointing Dr. 
Charles E. Saunders, a well-trained scientific man, as 
Dominion Cerealist in 1903. 

9. Marquis wheat was discovered as the result of the 
application of biological and chemical principles to the 
problem of breeding a new variety of wheat better adapted 
than Eed Eife for cultivation in the Prairie Provinces of 
western Canada. 

10. The great success of Marquis wheat in the world 
affords an excellent instance of the benefits which have 
already been derived from the encouragement given by re- 
sponsible governments to scientific research. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Origiit of Red Bobs and Kitcheitek 

I. Introduction 

0]^E of the most promising competitors of Marquis is 
Red Bohs which was selected hj Mr. Seager Wheeler at 
Rosthern, Saskatchewan, in 1910, from an Australian 
wheat called Bohs. Since Red Bobs is now being widely 
distributed among the farmers of western Canada and is 
being tested at various experimental farms and stations, a 
history of its origin is well worth recording. 

II. Origin of Bohs 
William Farrer ^ was a leading wheat-breeder in Aus- 

1 The following quotation from an article by A. E. V. Richardson, 
the Agricultural Superintendent of the Victoria Department of Ag- 
riculture, is of interest in throwing light upon Farrer's work: 

" The outstanding feature in wheat-breeding work in Australia is 
the remarkable success achieved by that patient and retiring geniiis, 
the late William Farrer, of New South Wales, in every branch of 
wheat improvement. 

" A man who could set out as clearly and comprehensively as 
Farrer (Farrer, The making and improvement of new varieties of 
wheat for Australian conditions. Agricultural Gazette, N. S. W., 
Feb., 1898), both as regards the goal toward which he was striving 
in his work of wheat improvement, and the methods whereby he 
hoped to reach that goal, and in less than a decade flood the market 
with varieties like Federation — the most prolific and popular farm- 
er's wheat in the Commonwealth; Bohs and Cometack — of unsur- 
passed milling excellence; Florence and Genoa — bunt-resisting va- 
rieties; and a host of others enjoying a widespread popularity, such 
as Bunyip, Thew, Bayah, Warren, Genoa, Firhank, Cleveland, Cedar, 
Jonathan, etc., must have possessed in an unusual degree the insight 
of genius. It is no exaggeration to say that Farrer has added mil- 

259 



260 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

tralia and did mucli to improve the varieties grown in his 
native country. By cross-breeding and selection he ob- 
tained a fine new wheat with white kernels, which he 
introduced under the name of Bobs ; and he sent about a 
teaspoonful of the seed to Dr. Charles Saunders, the 
Cerealist for the Dominion of Canada. Dr. Saunders 
tested Bobs at Ottawa and then sent some of it to the In- 
dian Head Experimental Farm in Saskatchewan where it 
was grown in plots for some years. It was found to be 
a little earlier ^ than Marquis but less productive.^ On 
account of this lesser productivity and the unfavorable 
color of its kernels, it was at length discarded. 

III. Importance of the Color of Wheat Kernels 

Even had Dr. Saunders found Bobs to be superior to 
Marquis in productivity, the white color of its grains 
would have been fatal to its introduction into western 
Canada. This is a matter that requires a little explana- 
tion. Australia is famed in the British markets for its 
white wheats but Canada for its red wheats. ISTow the 
British buyers are conservative men and suspicious of 
changes in wheat colors. Hence it has been found advis- 

lions sterling to the national exchequer by the creation of Feder- 
ation wheat. Dr. Cherry estimates the cash value of Farrer's work 
to Victoria alone during the 1909 season at £250,000. Since that 
estimate was framed, the area sown with this popular variety in 
Victoria has greatly increased, and the benefits have become com- 
mensurately greater. Farrer's work was continued by G. L. Sutton, 
late Wheat Experimentalist of New South Wales, who did a great 
deal to popularize the Farrer varieties amongst farmers." Wheat 
Breeding, The Journal of Heredity, March, 1915, pp. 124-125. 

2 Dominion of Canada Experimental Farms Report for 1915, p. 
877; for 1912, p. 123; for 1911, pp. 144-145; for 1910, p. 172. Bobs 
ripened 1 day earlier than Marquis in 1910, 3 days earlier in 1911, 
7 days earlier in 1915, and on the same day as Marquis in 1912. 

3 Dominion of Canada Experimental Farms Reports: for 1910, p. 
172; for 1911, p. 140; for 1915, p. 877. 



THiE ORIGIN OF RED BOBS 261 

able in Canada to produce wheats for export whicli are 
as red as possible, and the grading regulations have been 
framed in such a way as to discourage the raising of 
white wheats. 

The color of the red and white wheats is due to the 
color of the bran layer on the exterior of the kernels and 
not to that of the flour-making mass which the bran layer 
encloses. There is absolutely no correlation between the 
color of the bran and the quality of the grain in respect to 
bread-making. So-called white wheats have a pale yel- 
lowish bran layer while red wheats have a darker reddish 
bran layer. 'Now the bran layer upon a kernel is more 
or less translucent, so that the appearance of a grain as 
a whole is affected by the whiteness or translucency of 
the interior mass. If the kernel inside the bran layer is 
horny and translucent, as it is when it contains much 
gluten, the wheat appears to be relatively dark; but, if 
the interior is starchy and white, i. e. soft, the wheat 
has a paler appearance. Both white and red wheats may 
have the hard homy or the soft starchy interior and thus 
may appear darker or paler. The difference of shade de- 
pending on the difference of the interior only, is signifi- 
cant and important, because starchy wheats are of in- 
ferior value for bread-making. In considering a red 
and a white kind of wheat we may therefore have four 
possible kinds of grains: 

(1) hard red grains which are the darkest of all, 

(2) soft red grains which are pale reddish because 

the interior is white and the whiteness is 
seen through the translucent reddish bran 
layer, 

(3) hard white grains, in reality a dark yellow, 

which have a horny interior like hard red 
grains. 



262 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

(4) soft white grains whicli are very white and 
which, like soft red grains, have a starchy 
interior. 
'Now hard white grains (3) may be confused with soft 
red grains (2), although they are radically different. 
Hence it is that buyers in Great Britain hesitate to pur- 
chase white wheat from Canada. They are used to re- 
ceiving red wheat from this source and, when white 
wheat samples come into their hands, they are naturally 
suspicious that they are being offered soft red wheats 
which are very inferior for bread-making purposes. From 
these considerations it is clear that the policy of Dr. 
Saunders in refusing to introduce white wheats into 
western Canada is thoroughly justified. 

IV. The Discovery of Red Bohs hy Mr. Seager Wheeler 
The facts about to be related concerning the origin 
of Eed Bobs were obtained by the vn:'iter during an in- 
terview with Mr. Seager Wheeler at his farm at Rosthern 
during the summer of 1918. 

Mr. Wheeler of Rosthern, Saskatchewan, who was an 
active member of the Canadian Seed Growers' Associa- 
tion and who was engaged in making selections from Dr. 
Saunders' strain of Early Eed Fife and of Preston, heard 
of Bobs, and, during the winter of 1907-08, secured a 
ten-pound sample of it from the Experimental Farm at 
Indian Head. This sample he seeded in the spring of 
1908 on one of his special plots by the side of his other 
varieties of wheat; and, as the Bobs plants grew, he ob- 
served that they showed great uniformity and appeared to 
be free from all admixture. In the autumn the plot 
gave a yield at the rate of 60 bushels to the acre. 

In 1909 Mr. Wheeler seeded: (1) a small head-row 
plot, each row of seeds having been obtained from a single 




Fig. 41. Typical heads of Eed Bobs wheat, front and side view 
Natural size. Courtesy of the Grain Growers' Guide. 



THE OKIGIN OF RED BOBS 263 

selected head, (2) a -|4-acre plot, the seeds for which were 
obtained by mass selection, i. e., from a number of picked 
heads threshed together, and (3) an increase plot of two or 
three acres. It is important to note, on account of what 
follows, that side by side with all these plots of Bobs 
were similar plots of Early Ked Fife and of Preston, 
and that these three wheats were the only kinds grown by 
Mr. Wheeler in 1909. Again the Bobs plants appeared 
to be quite uniform in character. 

In 1910, Mr. Wheeler again seeded Bobs in: (1) a 
head-row plot, (2) a ^-acre plot seeded as in the previous 
year from hand-selected heads, and in (3) an increase 
plot of several acres. The heads for seeding the %-acre 
plot were obtained from the %-acre plot and also from 
the head-row plot of 1909 ; and the increase plot of 2-3 
acres was seeded from the seed resulting from the thresh- 
ing of the %-acre plot of 1909. Mr. Wheeler examined 
all the plants in the /4-acre plot as carefully as he could 
with the result that he discovered that a few of them, less 
than a dozen, had red grains in all their heads instead 
of white. Subsequently he detected a few red kernels 
in the grain threshed from the large increase plot of 
several acres. This was the very first appearance of any 
marked variability which Mr. Wheeler had been able 
to detect since the beginning of his study of Bobs. For 
the sake of convenience, we shall now call the original 
Bobs variety White Bobs and the red selection from it Bed 
Bobs. Red Bobs, as we have just seen, was selected 
from White Bobs in 1910. 

In 1911, Mr. Wheeler planted out the seeds obtained 
from the red-seeded heads of 1910 in head-rows, each 
head-row containing the seeds of a single head. The 
plants which came up from these first red seeds at once 
exhibited a remarkable amount of variability: some were 



264 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

awnless like White Bobs, but some were beardy, having 
short awns at the tip of the head like Eed Eife, while 
others were fully bearded; some were tall growers, some 
short, and some intermediate; some had open heads and 
others fairly dense heads; while, in respect to maturity, 
some were early in ripening and some late. All the 
grains produced, however, appeared to be red and no 
white ones were observed. Mr. Wheeler carefully selected 
heads of each type of plant to serve as seed for the next 
year. 

In 1912 the seed selected in 1911 was planted out in 
head-rows, and the plants arising from them showed 
some further variability especially in respect to seed 
color. All the plants in some head-rows produced noth- 
ing but red grains, while, in a few head-rows, some of the 
plants produced red grains only and some red and white 
grains mixed. Mr. Wheeler now began to use the name 
of Bed Bobs for the red-grained selection which he wished 
to multiply. 

V. B'&d Bobs the Product of a Natural Cross 

The occurrence of a few plants with red grains in- 
stead of white in the ^i-acre plot of 1910, and the extraordi- 
nary variability of the plants produced from them in 
1911, strongly suggests that the red-grained plants of 
1910 were cross-bred, -and that Eed Bobs owes its origin 
to a natural cross which took place in 1909 between White 
Bobs and one or other of the red wheats Red Eife and 
Preston which, as we have seen, were grown side by 
side with White Bobs in all the plots in that year. It 
is well known that when two varieties of wheat are 
crossed artificially, the grains resulting from the cross de- 
velop into plants which often differ but little from, or 
are identical with, one or the other parent, but that in 



THE ORIGIN OF RED BOBS 265 

the next year the grains produced from the hybrids give 
rise to a large number of distinct types. The red-seeded 
Eed Bobs plants of 1910, which apparently differed only 
in their seed color from White Bobs, correspond to the 
cross-bred plants or first filial generation in an artificial 
cross; and the numerous types which were obtained from 
these red grains in 1911, correspond exactly to the numer- 
ous types one frequently obtains in the second filial gen- 
eration of an artificial cross. 

That such natural crosses as that suggested for the origin 
of Eed Bobs do actually occur occasionally under plot con- 
ditions, although flower self-fertilization is the rule, has 
now been sufficiently established by the observations of a 
number of cerealists. Dr. Charles Saunders was the first 
on this continent to record such a cross. In 1907, in a 
Bulletin on the Quality of Wheat, in order to show the 
value of the chewing test for indicating the gluten value 
of wheat types, he says : " Some years ago an experi- 
ment was tried in order to obtain if possible a natural 
cross between two varieties of wheat. Bed Fife (beard- 
less) and Eio Grande (bearded) were sown mixed in a 
small plot. When the grain was ripe a few heads of 
Eed Fife, which were borne on rather short straw, were 
selected, and from these the next season about 200 kernels 
were sown. Among the plants produced from these seeds, 
one was found on which the awns were somewhat better 
developed than is usual in true Eed Fife. When some of 
the seeds of this plant were chewed, it was found that 
the gluten quality was altogether distinct from, and de- 
cidedly inferior to that of Eed Fife. In this way it was 
proved that the plant was a cross, the pollen from the 
Eio Grande having fallen on the head of Eed Fife during 
the blossoming period in the year previous. As this 
proof, however, would not perhaps be accepted by other 



266 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

observers without confirmation, the seeds from the cross- 
bred plant were sown the following year. They produced 
mixed types, bearded, partly bearded, and beardless. The 
seeds as well as the heads showed the influence of the 
Eio Grande, being, in many cases, larger than those of 
Eed Fife. These observations, of course, completed the 
proof of the cross-bred nature of the parent plant, and 
demonstrated the value of the chewing test as a means 
of distinguishing similar varieties of wheat." ^ l^ilsson- 
Ehle ^ has shown by experiment that some varieties of 
wheat are much more liable to natural cross-pollination 
.than others. Smith ^ found eight natural hybrids in 96 
rows of Turkey winter wheat. Leighty,"^ in 1915, de- 
scribed four cases of natural crosses between wheat and 
rye. In 1917 Hayes ^ recorded that three plants out of 
fifty taken from nursery plots of Bluestem were natural 
crosses, as proved from studying their progeny, and that 
two plants out of 4-7 selections of Marquis gave progeny 
with both red and white kernels indicating that they were 
first generation crosses. The writer visited Dr. Hayes at 
the University Farm at St. Paul in July, 1918, and saw 

4C. E. Saunders, Quality in Wheat. Bulletin No. 57, Central 
Experimental Farm, Ottawa, 1907, pp. 9-l€. Cf., by the same author, 
A Natural Hybrid in Wheat, Proc. American Breeders' Association, 
Vol. I, 1905, pp. 137-138. 

5 H. Nilsson-Ehle, Gibt es erbliche Weizenrassen mit mehr oder 
weniger Selbstbef ruchtung ? Zeitschrift f. Pflanzensucht, Bd. Ill, 
1915, pp. 1-6. 

6 L. H. Smith, Occurrence of Natural Hybrids in Wheat, Proo. 
Amer. Breeders' Association, Vol. V, 1912, pp. 412-414. 

7 C. E. Leighty, Natural Wheat-Rye Hybrids, Journal of the Ameri- 
can Society of Agronomy, Vol. 7, 1915, pp. 209-216. 

8 H. K. Hayes, Natural Cross-pollination in Wheat, Journal of 
American Society of Agronomy, Vol. 10, 1918, pp. 120-122. The 
citations for Nilsson-Ehle, Smith, and Leighty have been made from 
this paper. 



THE ORIGIN OF RED BOBS 267 

for hiins'elf several of the natural hybrids and their 
progeny growing in the plots. He particularly noticed 
a cross-bred plant produced by a natural cross between 
Marquis and Bluestem which possessed intermediate char- 
acters in the head and straw. In view of the known oc- 
currence of natural crosses between different varieties of 
wheat when grown side by side in small plots, and in view 
of facts known in connection with Mr. Wheeler's plots, 
the author has no hesitation in expressing his belief that 
Bed Bobs owes its origin to a natural cross between 
White Bobs and Saunders' strain of Early Bed Fife or 
between White Bobs and Preston, one or other of the red 
wheats having been the male parent. 

Professor W. P. Thompson of the University of 
Saskatchewan has crossed White Bobs with Preston and 
White Bobs with Bed Pife, and he has informed the writer 
that the first generation plants resulting from the cross- 
bred grains in each of the two crosses have heads which 
cannot be distinguished in general appearance from those 
of White Bobs, except in the color of the grains which 
are red instead of white. This fits in very well with the 
supposition that the few red-grained plants which Mr. 
Wheeler found in his White Bobs plots in 1910 were ac- 
tually derived from cross-bred kernels such as those Pro- 
fessor Thompson has produced artificially in the manner 
described. 

Preston is a fully bearded wheat, whereas Early Bed 
Fife is bald except for a few awns at the top of the head. 
White Bobs and Bed Bobs are quite awnless. Since 
bearded forms appeared after the natural cross in the 
second generation, it might be supposed that the male 
parent of Red Bobs was the bearded Preston and not the 
almost bald Early Red Fife; but such an opinion may 



268 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

well be erroneous, for it lias been observed by Dr. Charles 
Saunders ^ that, when two practically awnless wheats have 
been artificially crossed, bearded types often occur in 
the second and later generations. Mr. Wheeler was un- 
able to suggest to the writer which of the two wheats. 
Early Eed Fife or Preston, had supplied the foreign pollen. 
Perhaps, however, the matter might be decided by making 
two crosses, one between White Bobs and Early Eed Fife 
and another between White Bobs and Preston, and com- 
paring the progeny in the second and third generations 
with those observed by Mr. Wheeler as the result of the 
natural crossing. It so happens, as we have seen, that 
Professor Thompson has already made crosses between 
White Bobs and Eed Eife and White Bobs and Preston. 
Perhaps, when his studies of these crosses are complete, 
he will be able to solve the problem of the exact male 
parentage of Eed Bobs with which we are confronted. 

VI. The Selection, Multiplication, and Distribution of 

Bed Bobs 

In 1913, Mr. Wheeler sowed seeds of about 60 differ- 
ent types of Eed Bobs. A severe hailstorm, on July 28, 
partially destroyed his crop but served to reveal the 
fact that some of the types were much better than others 
in strength of straw. 

In 1914, Mr. Wheeler cut down his types to three or 
four which, except for seed color, most closely resembled 
the original White Bobs. These mixed strains on a ^- 
acre plot yielded at the rate of 50 bushels to the acre, 

» Charles E. Saunders, Wheat Breeding in Canada, Keports of 
the Winnipeg Meeting of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, 1909 ; also Dominion of Canada Experimental Farms 
Reports for 1910, p. 166. 



THE OKIGIN OF RED BOBS 269 

whereas Marquis, on a similar plot and under similar 
conditions, yielded at the rate of 43 bushels to the acre. 

In 1915, the seed of Eed Bobs, containing three strains, 
was again sown on a "l^-acre plot. A certain number of 
heads of the three types were selected by hand to seed 
head-row plots the next year and then the rest of the 
plants were threshed together. 

In 1916, Mr. Wheeler again sowed his usual sets of 
plots with Red Bobs, but unfortunately a severe hailstorm 
completely destroyed his plants. However, he still 
possessed about 10 bushels of seed, a sheaf or two, and 
a few heads which had been held over from the harvest 
of 1915, and all this was available for seed the next year. 
The chief result of the destruction wrought by the hail 
was a loss of a whole year in the multiplication of the 



In 1917, Mr. Wheeler sowed a five-acre field with Red 
Bobs containing three types obtained from a bulk thresh- 
ing. The harvest consisted of 200 bushels of seed and was 
disposed of to the Grain Growers' Guide. This company 
has distributed the seed to those who subscribe to its paper 
in 10, 20, 40, and 60 pound samples, and it is now 
(1918) being grown by about 500 farmers on about 75 
acres of land. Its test under diverse conditions is, there- 
fore, only just beginning to be made. 

This year, 1918, Mr. Wheeler is continuing the study 
of his three strains of Red Bobs, and it is possible that he 
may eventually select one only for ultimate distribution. 
The author visited Mr. Wheeler at his farm on the 23rd of 
August and spent a whole day with him looking over the 
plots, collecting the data of the history of his selections, 
and in discussing his methods of work. The standing 
crops had a very fine appearance and, in the %-acre plots 



270 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

of Eed Bobs, Marquis, and Kitchener (his selection from 
Marquis), the first-named certainly appeared by its yel- 
lower color to be some days earlier than the other two. 

VII. Red Bobs at the University of Saskatchewan 

After selecting Red Bobs in 1910, Mr. Wheeler sold 
some of his White Bobs to Mr. George Harvey, a neigh- 
boring farmer, who showed a sample of the harvest which 
it yielded at the Rosthern Seed Fair in the winter of 
1912-13. The exhibit won a first prize. Professor 
Bracken, of the Field Husbandry Department of the 
University of Saskatchewan, who was acting as a judge 
at the Fair, took home a sample of the prize White Bobs 
and sowed it in one of the University plots in the spring 
of 1913. When the harvest had been secured, he searched 
the bulk threshing and found a few red kernels like those 
obtained by Mr. Wheeler in 1910. These red kernels 
were planted out in 1914 in foundation plots, and they 
gave rise to various wheat-plant types, some of which were 
bald, some bearded, etc., resembling those which had been 
obtained by Mr. Wheeler from his first red grains in 1911. 
Since 1914, Professor Bracken has been engaged in select- 
ing the most desirable of the types and in discarding those 
which are not fixed. In 1915 he sowed centgener plots, 
each little square of ground being seeded with the seed 
obtained from the heads of a single plant of the previous 
year. The harvest of each centgener plot was subjected 
to a bulk threshing, and the grain resulting was sown 
in 1916 in a multiplier plot. Each multiplier plot con- 
sisted of two rows, 100 links long, equal to an area of %oo- 
acre. The harvest of each multiplier plot was subjected 
to a bulk threshing, and the grain resulting was sown in 
1917 upon a Koo-acre plot. The grain obtained from 



THE OEIGIN OF RED BOBS 271 

each M-OO-acre plot was again sown in 1918 upon a 
/4oo-acre plot, and plots of this size are to be continued 
for five years so that for each strain being tested reliable 
results may be obtained in respect to yield, earliness, mill- 
ing and baking qualities, etc. 

T^rom single plants grown in 1914 from red grains. 
Professor Bracken has now selected twelve strains for 
further study. From the records which he kindly showed 
to the writer, it appears that some of these strains ripen 
their grains about the same time as Marquis, some later 
than Marquis and some as much as ten days earlier. Four 
of the strains yielded less than Marquis per acre and eight 
more than Marquis. Elaborate milling and baking tests 
were carried out in 1917, and some of the strains passed 
these tests in a very satisfactory manner. 

In 1918, increase plots of %-acre were sown in order 
to obtain enough seed to make tests upon various types of 
soil in different parts of the Province of Saskatchewan. 

In the winter of 1914-15, Mr. Wheeler gave to Pro- 
fessor Bracken's Department of Field Husbandry about 
40 strains of his Kcd Bobs, and these were sown at the 
University Farm in 1915. 'None of these strains were 
sown in 1916, two in 1917 and seven in 1918. Some of 
Mr. Wheeler's strains of Ked Bobs are therefore now 
being tested alongside of Professor Bracken's red-seeded 
strains of White Bobs. Professor Bracken has now 
about 100,000 red^seeded plants in his plots, and it seems 
very likely that one or more new wheats of considerable 
value to agriculture will ultimately be derived from them. 
There can be no question but that all the various tests to 
which they are being subjected are being carried out in 
the most exact and thorough manner. 



2Y2 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

VIII. Description of Red Bobs 

Red Bobs is a hard red spring wheat. Its heads are 
absolutely awnless and of a compact type, the spikelets 
in a good year being well filled with grains from the 
bottom to the top of each head. The heads are very up- 
right with little or no tendency to lean, and the straw 
is very strong, upright, and yellow. The chaff is white 
or light yellow, lighter than that of Marquis. The up- 
right tendency allows the heads to lie closely in the sheaf 
with little or no waste. On the average, on Mr, Wheel- 
er's farm, Red Bobs has been a week earlier in ripening 
than Marquis since 1912 inclusive, and it has yielded 
a little more than Marquis each year. In 1917 Marquis 
yielded 40 bushels to the acre and Red Bobs 53. This, 
however, is an extreme difference in the yield of the two 
varieties. The grains are of a good red color, short 
and rounded, and they give a good weight per measured 
bushel. Their baking and milling qualities are about 
equal to those of Marquis. The most remarkable point 
about Red Bobs, as grown on Mr. Wheeler's farm, is the 
combination of earliness and yield. Mr. Wheeler feels 
that this new variety, owing to its combination of earliness, 
high yield, high baking and milling qualities, and the 
characters of its head and straw, has no equal. An ab- 
solute decision of its merits, however, can only be arrived 
at after it has been tested under diverse conditions for a 
series of years. 

IX. A Visit to Mr. Wheelers Farm 

A brief note may here be added of a personal nature. 
The author, as already remarked, visited Mr. Seager 
Wheeler at his farm on August 23, 1918 ; and there spent 
a very happy day in his company, looking over his plots, 



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THE ORIGIN OF RED BOBS 2Y3 

collecting the data of the history of his selections, and in 
discussing his methods of work. The crops were in the 
most interesting condition, fast ripening and some ready 
to cut. The three chief kinds of wheat in the head-row 
plots and the only ones in the %-acre plots were Marquis, 
Kitchener, and Red Bohs, and it was upon these that Mr. 
Wheeler was evidently concentrating his chief attention; 
but he was also testing three winter wheats, namely Kanred 
which originally came from Kansas, a selection of his own 
of Turkey Red, and Wmter-Springj sl wheat which orig- 
inated on his farm in an uncertain manner. Mr. Wheeler 
was not confining his attention to wheat only, for he was 
making selections of oats, barley, potatoes, clovers, al- 
falfa, brome-grass, and western rye-grass; and in his 
plots were to be seen rows of soy-beans and com which, 
however, do not as a rule grow well so far north and were 
this year a partial failure. His smaller plots, in the 
garden by the side of his house, were protected by trees 
and hedges of Eussian poplar, etc., which had been 
planted in rows so as to form wind screens. 

Mr. Wheeler proved an admirable guide and, withal, 
unassuming, courteous, ready to answer all the numerous 
questions of his visitor, and also eager to receive any 
information bearing upon his own work. As he passed 
from plot, to plot, pointing out the qualities of the plants 
in each, it became evident that he was whole-heartedly ab- 
sorbed in the task of raising new and improved cereals; 
and, quite unconsciously, in his conversation and manner, 
he exhibited an otherworldliness to a degxee not often 
met with in such practical men as farmers. The writer 
could not help but feel that there was uppermost in Mr. 
Wheeler's mind not the thought of monetary reward but 
the hope of originating something of high value to west- 
em agriculture. 



274 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



X. A Biographical Note 

Mr. Seager Wheeler was born in the Isle of Wight. 
His father and uncles were fishermen at Black Gang, a 
place once famous for the smuggling that went on there. 
He attended the National School at Yentnor which he 
left when eleven years old after passing through all the 
grades. He then worked at the W. H. Smith bookstall at 
Ventnor Station. A few years later, in 1885, he crossed 
the ocean and came out to Saskatoon where he worked on 
his uncle's farm for three years. In 1888 he took up a 
homestead a few miles north of Saskatoon, and in 1897, 
Queen Victoria's Jubilee Year, removed to his present 
farm at Eosthern. Mr. Wheeler has thus been associated 
with western Canada for 33 years. 

Mr. Wheeler began to make selections of cereals and 
potatoes on his own initiative about the year 1900 but not 
in a very systematic manner. In 1904, he became an 
active member of the Canadian Seed G-rowers' Associa- 
tion, and then undertook the selection of seed according 
to definite rules. At the same time, he commenced to 
study individual plants in small seed-plots and to sow 
head-rows. At first he made selections from Preston, a 
wheat still grown on many farms at Eosthern, and then 
selections from Dr. Saunders' strain of Early Eed Fife. 
He procured a sample of White Bobs for sowing in 1908, 
and a sample of Marquis for sowing in 1911. 

In 1911 he won his first international prize for the 
best bushel of hard red spring wheat at the New York 
Land Show with Marquis; and he won similar prizes 
with Marquis in 1914 and 1915. In 1916 he also won the 
international prize but, on this occasion, not with Marquis 
but with Kitchener, a selection from Marquis. In 1918, 
for the fifth time, he carried off the international prize, 



THE ORIGIN OF RED BOBS 2Y5 

but whether he won it with Marquis or Red Bobs is uiicer- 
taiii.i^ He selected Red Bobs from White Bobs in 1910, 
and Kitchener from Marquis in 1911. As an active 
member of the Canadian Seed Growers' Association, he 
has supplied to other farmers a considerable amount of 
pure seed of Marquis, Kitchener, and Red Bobs. He has 
also been much in demand as a judge at Seed Fairs and 
in standing crop competitions. His stimulating influence 
has done much to forward the best interests of agriculture 
in western Canada. When one considers the very small 
amount of schooling which Mr. Wheeler received as a 
boy, one cannot help feeling surprise at the successes which 
he has achieved in the difiicult task of plant-breeding. 
However, he is a born observer, and has remarkable 
natural ability in distinguishing slight differences in 
cereals and other plants. There can be no doubt that his 
selection of Red Bobs from White Bobs was a fine piece 
of work, such as would be highly creditable to any plant 
breeder ; and the reputation which he has thereby achieved 
has been well merited. 

XI. Kitchener 

Kitchener is a selection from Marquis made by Mr. 
Seager Wheeler in 1911. The year 1911 was the first 
in which Mr. Wheeler grew Marquis and he naturally 
paid a considerable amount of attention to it. One plant 
in a plot of Marquis stood out from all the others as a dis- 
tinct type. He therefore pulled it up by the roots and 
stored it until winter. Each of the four or five heads 
was then rubbed out in the hand separately, and the 
grains from each head were sown in head-rows in a plot 
in 1912. The year 1912 was very wet, so much so that 

10 Yicl^e Chapter III, Section IX, on Prizes Won by Marquis. 



276 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

the grains of some of Mr. Wheeler's wheats sprouted from 
the heads standing in the fields ; but Kitchener did not do 
this. In that year, Kitchener gave a better result than 
the other strains of Marquis in point of uniformity, in 
the color, shape, and size of the grains, and in apparent 
yield. In 1913 a hailstorm destroyed many of Mr. 
Wheeler's plants. All the soft-strawed and bearded wheats 
such as bearded strains of Red Bobs, Preston, and some 
other wheats, were dashed to the ground. Kitchener, how- 
ever, stood the test well, even better than Marquis. 

Kitchener, Mr. Wheeler feels, has the finest straw of any 
wheat, for it is not only strong but also very elastic. 
It ripens about the same time as Marquis, occasionally 
perhaps a little later, and is later than Red Bobs, Ruby, 
and Prelude. In 1914 a sheaf of it won an international 
prize at Denver, Colorado; and in 1915 a quarter of an 
acre hand-selected seed plot yielded at the rate of 80 
bushels to the acre, at about the same rate as the yield 
of Marquis on Mr. Wheeler's farm in 1911. In 1916 
Kitchener won the sweep-stake for the best wheat at the 
International Soils Products Exposition at El Paso, Texas. 
In 1917, one field plot yielded 63 bushels to the acre and 
another 50 bushels. It is evident that the yielding quali- 
ties of Kitchener under field conditions at Rosthern are 
very high. Kitchener is now distributed to a number 
of farmers in the three western provinces, and it has also 
been grown in Ontario where its yield has been excellent. 
In the south and southwest parts of the Prairie Provinces, 
where it is dry, and where Red Eif e is grown in preference 
to Marquis on account of its longer straw. Kitchener prob- 
ably has a future owing to superiority in length and 
strength of straw. It will doubtless have its day for a 
little while at least in some places. 

Kitchener, like Marquis, is not absolutely awnless, and 



THE ORIGIN OF RED BOBS 277 

it lias a solid compact head, and strong straight straw. 
Its grains as compared with those of Marquis are slightly 
larger and smoother. The grains are the smoothest known 
to Mr. Wheeler. 



CHAPTEE Y 

The Wm> Wheat of Pai.estiis'e 

I. The Importance and Antiquity of Agriculture 

For some hundreds of thousands of years primitive 
man was a hunter who knew nothing of either cultivated 
plants or domesticated animals. Towards the end of the 
long Stone Age^ the way to civilization was opened through 
the introduction of agriculture and through the taming 
of the dog, the ox, the sheep, the pig, the horse, and other 
denizens of the woods and plains. 

The cultivation of plants and the breeding of animals 
for food greatly diminished the danger of starvation, and 
enabled primitive man to give up his nomadic habits and 
to live in villages. The grouping of families together in 
settled communities led to the development of an ever more 
complex social existence and consciousness with the re- 
sult that there have been differentiated such remarkable 
social organisms as those represented by France, Italy, 
the United States, and Great Britain, with their dense 
populations, their innumerable towns and cities, their 
complex civic life, their public buildings, their literatures, 
their laws, their art, their science, their music, their manu- 
facturing machinery, and their wonderful means of com- 
munication and transportation. Without the discovery 
and introduction of agriculture by primitive man it is 
certain that not one of the world's great cities, nor even 
a town of one thousand inhabitants, could ever have come 
into existence. 

278 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 2Y9 

Settled communities based on agriculture, as we know 
from ancient records, were already established many- 
thousands of years ago. A glimpse into the life of one 
such community is given us by an inscription upon an 
obelisk set up by Mannichtousan, King of Sis, who lived 
near Susa about one hundred miles north of the mouth of 
the Euphrates. The obelisk in question was set up be- 
tween 4000 B. c. and 3500 b. c, and the inscription 
upon it records the price of a sale of land. The price of 
the land was fixed by the value of the crop. The king 
bound himself to nourish, clothe, and protect the serfs 
and slaves who were attached to the estate and who were 
obliged to cultivate it. Near the place where the obelisk 
was discovered, the accumulated refuse was found to be 
fifty feet deep. The King of Sis evidently ruled over a 
community which had advanced a long way in the cultiva- 
tion of the soil and in general civilization.^ 

II. The Antiquity and Origin of Wheat 

Archaeologists have discovered wheat in the rubbish 
heaps of the lake dwellings of both Switzerland and Italy, 
so that we have the clearest evidence that this cereal was 
cultivated by prehistoric man. linger found wheat in a 
brick of the pyramid of Dashur in Egypt, to which he 
assigned the date 3359 b. c. ; and the Chinese grew wheat 
as long ago as 2700 b. c.^ The ancient civilizations of 
Babylonia, Egypt, Crete, Greece, and Rome were un- 
doubtedly based on wheat as one of the principal food 
plants. 

Wheat has been found in the sarcophagi of ancient 

1 G. F. Scott Elliott, Prehistoric Man and His Story, London, 
1915, p. 216. 

2 Alphonse de CandoUe, Origin of Cultivated Plants, London, 1884, 
p. 355. 



280 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Egyptian niTxininies. It is still currently reported that 
this mummy wheat, after being sown, has been observed 
to germinate ; but there is no truth whatever in this story. 
Careful experiment has demonstrated that all real mummy 
wheat has entirely lost its vitality. The oldest tombs 
containing wheat belong to the First Dynasty and are 
about 6,000 years old. 

The ancients, who knew nothing of the evolution of 
man and of his slow passage to civilization through the 
Age of Stone and the Age of Bronze, attributed the origin 
of wheat to supernatural agency. The Chinese regarded 
wheat as a direct gift of heaven. The Egyptians believed 
its introduction to have been due to Osiris, and the Greeks 
to Demeter and Tryptolemus. 

According to Grecian mythology, Persephone, the 
daughter of the goddess Demeter, was carried off by 
Hades; whereupon Demeter visited the earth and sought 
her child far and wide. On the tenth day of her search, 
she learned the truth from the all-seeing Sun ; and so angry 
did she become with Zeus for having permitted the out- 
rage that, in her wrath, she made the earth barren, so 
that the mortals living upon it were threatened with de- 
struction by famine. At last a compromise was effected 
and it was arranged that Persephone should spend two- 
thirds of the year with her mother and one-third with her 
husband. On returning to Olympus, Demeter left to 
mankind the gifts of wheat and of agriculture, as a token 
of her grateful recollection for the generous treatment 
she had received upon the earth. She then sent Tryptole- 
mus the Eleusinian round the world in her serpent- 
drawn chariot to diffuse the knowledge of agriculture and 
of the blessings which accompany it, such as the settlement 
of fixed places of abode, civil order, and wedlock. Tem- 
ples were raised to Demeter who was henceforth regarded 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 281 




Fig. 43. Demeter enthroned. From a painting found at Pompeii, Naples. 

as the goddess of agriculture; and the most ancient seats 
of her worship were Athens and Eleusis where the Eharian 



282 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

plain was solemnly plowed every year in memory of 
the first sowing of wheat. Among the offerings dedicated 
to her by her votaries were fruit and honey-comb, the 
cow and the sow, the latter as emblems of productivity. 
Among her attributes were ears of wheat. 

At Rome in b. c. 496 there was a drought. The 
Sibylline Books were therefore consulted and, as a result, 
the cult of Demeter was introduced into Italy. The 
Greek name Demeter was changed by the Romans to 
Ceres,^ and a temple was raised to the goddess on ono 
of the seven hills of Rome in b. c. 490. The worshipers 
of Ceres in Italy were almost entirely plebeian, and they 
annually celebrated the festival of the Cerealia or games 
introduced at the founding of the temple. One festival 
was held in April and another was held in August. At 
the latter, after fasting for nine days, the women, clothed 
in white and adorned with crowns of ripe ears of wheat, 
offered to the goddess the first-fruits of the harvest. The 
worship of Ceres was maintained in its purest form in 
the country. Here the people of the soil, before the be- 
ginning of harvest, offered to the goddess of agriculture a 
sow (porca prsecidanea) and dedicated to her the first cut- 
tings of the wheat fields (prsemetium). 

At Pompeii, the City of the Dead, which was buried in 
ashes during the eruption of Vesuvius in a. d. 79, there 
have been preserved to us some of the world's greatest 
treasures in art and archaeology, and among them are two 
mural paintings of the goddess of agriculture. In one of 
them (Figure 43), the artist has represented her as full of 

3 Ceres may have been originally a native Italian deity whose name 
came from creare, to create, and who presided over or represented the 
generative powers of nature. If so, she was replaced by Demeter 
when the cult of the Greek goddess was introduced into Italy. Cf. 
W, W. Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, 
London, 1908, pp. 73, 181. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 283 

dignity seated upon a throne : lier head is crowned with a 
wheaten garland ; in her right hand she hears a torch ; upon 
her left arm reclines a sheaf of wheat, while her relation to 
the cereal she is supposed to have introduced is further em- 
phasized by a basket of wheat which stands on the ground 
at her feet. In the other painting, the goddess is repre- 
sented to us in a standing posture; but again she wears 
a wheaten crown, while she bears a torch in her right hand 
and ears of wheat in her left.* 

The people of ancient Italy, notwithstanding their 
prayers to Ceres, found that their wheat and other cereal 
crops were often affected by Eust; and mention of the 
disease is made in the writings of Aristotle, Theophrastus, 
Strabo, Varro, Columella, Ovid, and Pliny. Pliny states 
that it was " the greatest pest of the crops." The 
Romans believed in a Rust-god whom they called Robigus, 
and they held that he had power to ward off the rust 
disease. On the twenty-fifth of April, therefore, at the 
time in each year when the rust usually attacked the 
wheat, they celebrated a feast called the Robigalia with 
the object of propitiating Robigus. The Quirinal flamen 
presided over the ceremony, and the procession marched 
out from Rome to the lucus Bohigi, situated at the fifth, 
milestone along the Claudian Way. There, in the sacred 
grove, before a crowd clad in white togas, the priest offered 
up a prayer to the stern Rust-god, imploring him to spare 
the crops of Ceres, a libation of wine was poured upon the 
altar, incense was thrown into the flames, and the en- 
trails of a sheep and of a dog were placed upon the altar 
and burnt. The dog was reddish, this color being sym- 
bolical of the pest to be avoided.- Ovid, once, when re- 

4 Cf. W. H. Roscher, article on Ceres, Lexicon, Leipzig; also H. T. 
Peek, articles on Demeter and Geres in Harper's Dictionary of Classi- 
cal Literature and Antiquities, New York, 1896. 



284 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

turning to the capital from the neighboring town of 
I^omentiim, met the Eobigalian procession by chance, and 
it is to his pen that we are indebted for an account of the 
rites which were performed by the priest.^ 

Wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, rice, and maize are 
collectively designated as cereals. It is of interest to 
note that the word cereal originally meant something per- 
taining to Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. It is thus 
clear that when we speak of cereals, we employ a term 
which was brought into being and shaped into usefulness 
by the worshipers of the gods and goddesses of Italy some 
2,500 years ago. 

The besom of science has swept away many of the 
superstitions of the past, even stretching to high Olympus 
and removing the gods and goddesses from their seats. 
When considering the origin of wheat, we no longer think 
of Osiris and Ceres but seek to guide our steps into the 
way of truth with light from the lamp of the now thor- 
oughly well established doctrine of evolution. Our pres- 
ent biological knowledge leads us to believe that the 
wheat now in cultivation was formerly derived from one or 
more species of wild grass-plants which grew somewhere 
in Asia, and that the first wheat-grower was a man or 
woman who lived toward the end of the long Stone Age. 

The Palaeolithic Period or Older Stone Age was co- 
incident with the Great Ice Age, and there is no reason 
to believe that palaeolithic man knew anything of agri- 
culture. The much shorter ISTeolithic Period or !Newer 
Stone Age was passed through subsequently to the dis- 
appearance of the ice. The remains of neolithic man seem 
to prove that the growing of wheat was associated with 
his development. Mr. Scott Elliott after discussing the 

5 Gf, A. H. R. Buller, The Fungus Lore of the Greeks and Romans, 
Transactions of the British Mycologieal Society, 1914, pp. 30-31. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 285 

arcliseological evidence upon which his conclusion is based, 
states that ^' the best guess as to the date of the first harvest 
is perhaps between 15,000 b. c. and 10,000 b. c." ^ 

III. Tlie Prototypes of Cereals 

Certain wild species of barlej, oats, and rye are known, 
which may reasonably be considered as the prototypes or 
ancestors of their cultivated relatives. Thus Hordeum 
spontaneum, a wild barley, is regarded as the wild form of 
Hordeum distichon, the two-rowed barley ; and it is further 
believed that from this species have been derived Hordeum 
vulgare, the common six-rowed square-headed barley, and 
Hordeum Jiexasticlion, the true six-rowed barley. Secale 
montanum, a wild rye, has been considered to be the 
prototype of Secale cereale, the cultivated rye; while 
Avena fatua, a wild oat, or some other species of wild 
Avena, is believed to be the progenitor of cultivated oats. 
However, until recently, no one knew anything about 
the original wild form of wheat and most botanists were in- 
clined to believe that it had become extinct. In 1899, the 
Count of Solms-Laubach declared that the genealogical 
record of wheat had been lost forever and that the history 
of its development could only be written from theoretical 
considerations. Even whilst the Count was publishing 
his views, there was a small group of botanists who not 
only believed that the wild ancestor of wheat would one 
day be found but that a single head of it was already 
known. Chief among these men was Komicke who de- 
voted some forty years to the study of cereals.*^ 

6 a F. Scott Elliott, loo. cit., p. 217. 

7 Cf. A. Aaronsohn, Agricultural and Botanical Explorations in 
Palestine, Bulletin No. 180, Bureau of Plant Industry, United States 
Department of Agriculture, Washington, 1910, pp. 37-38. 



286 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

IV. ^Komickes Discovery in a Herbarium 

Kornicke published his great work on cereals in the 
year 1885. In 1873, when he was preparing the notes 
for his manuscript, he was looking through the pressed 
specimens of grasses preserved in the herbarium of the 
National Museum at Vienna. On examining a sheet of 
wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) which Kotschy had 
gathered in 1855 at Easheyya, on the northwestern side 
of Mount Hermon in Palestine, his eye was attracted to the 
ear of a graminiferous plant which he at once recognized 
as a species of wild wheat closely resembling the cultivated 
wheat known as emmer. Curiously enough, he forgot to 
mention the wild wheat in his book on cereals published 
twelve years later; and it was not until 1889, at a meeting 
of the Society of the Lower Ehine and Westphalia, that 
he reported his discovery to the scientific world. He 
then named Kotschy's plant Triticum vulgare dicoccoides 
and declared that it was the prototype of our cultivated 
wheat. For some years afterwards he repeatedly referred 
to the wild Triticum and urged botanists who went to the 
region of Mount Hermon to seek for it. He even en- 
deavored to induce the scientific academies of Vienna 
and Berlin to organize an expedition to Palestine to find 
the plant which he felt to be of so much interest ; but his 
efforts were all in vain.^ 

V. Rediscovery of the Wild Wheat hy Aaronsohn 

In 1902, Aaron Aaronsohn, Director of the Jewish 
Agricultural Experiment Station at Haifa in Palestine, 
made a visit to Berlin and whilst there Professors Ascher- 
son, Schweinfurth, and Warburg called his attention to 
the importance, from a theoretical point of view, of finding 
8 A. Aaronsohn, loc. cit., p. 37. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 287 

the wild wheat. In 1904, therefore, Aaronsohn visited 
the foot of Mount Hermon and began his search. How- 
ever, he had but little hope of success, for two other 
botanists, Post and Bornmiiller, had previously botanized 
in the neighborhood of Kasheyya, the locality on Mount 
Hermon where Kotschys original specimen was sup- 
posed to have been gathered, and yet in their two Floras 
of Syria and Palestine they had failed to report finding 
any species of Triticum. Aaronsohn, therefore, did not 
long persist in his search and concluded that there had 
been some mistake in the record of the locality from 
which Kotschy's wild wheat had come. 

In 1905, Aaronsohn was again in Berlin and was 
urged by the botanists there to renew his search. Stim- 
ulated anew, he returned to Palestine, and in June, 1906, 
took a long trip to Upper Galilee with the intention of 
going as far as Mount Hermon and of spending as much 
time as possible in looking for the wild wheat. . This 
time his effort was crowned with success and even sooner 
than he had anticipated. Whilst on the way to Mount 
Hermon, he had the good fortune to rediscover the species 
for which he had sought and thus to bring to light one of 
Ihe most interesting plants in the world. His own ac- 
count of the event, which is contained in a Bulletin of the 
United States Department of Agriculture, will now be 
quoted : 

" On June 18, I was walking with my friend, the 
agronomist Mr. M. Bermann, in the vineyard of the Jew- 
ish Agricultural Colony at Eosh Pinar, at the foot of 
Jebel Safed, and was trying to demonstrate to him the 
Eocene origin of the ground. Suddenly I noticed in a 
crevice of a rock of nujnmulitic limestone an isolated 
plant which at first sight looked like a stool of barley, but 
which on closer inspection proved to be a wheat, the ripe 



288 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

spikelets of which could be detached from the brittle 
rachis bj the slightest shake. I could hardly believe that 
it was really the plant for which I was looking. The 
development of the head and grains was so perfect — so 
nearly like the forms produced under cultivation at the 
present day — that I could scarcely believe that this was 
their wild prototype, though, to be sure, if it had not 
been so well developed, primitive man would not have 
noticed it, or at least would not have appreciated the im- 
portance of its cultivation to such an extent as he did. 

" I could not at that time remain longer at Rosh Pinar, 
and so left the next day for the north. On the way from 
Eosh Pinar to Rasheyya (three days on horseback), I 
looked for wild wheat, but could not find any. At 
Rasheyya, too, I spent a great deal of time botanizing 
in the vineyards in the hope of finding the Triticmn there, 
but also without success. But when I began to extend 
my search to uncultivated lands, along the edges of roads 
and in the crevices of rocks, I found a few stools of 
the wild Triticum. Later I came across it in great abun- 
dance, and the most astonishing thing about it was the 
large number of forms it displayed. The sample speci- 
men of Posh Pinar, however, was the finest one. This 
plant had made a very vigorous growth and bore heads of 
which the stiff, rugose awns (beards) were nearly or quite 
6 inches long. At the foot of Mount Hermon the stems 
were longer but fewer. Instead of being 2 feet high, as 
at Eosh Pinar, this wild wheat at Easheyya was more than 
40 inches high. 

^' I ascended Mount Hermon and went around to the 
other side. I intend at some future time to describe this 
trip, as its botanical and geological results may interest the 
scientific world; but here I shall speak only of the Tri- 
ticum. In descending from the summit of Mount Hermon 




Fig. 44. View of Mejdel esh Schems, on the slopes of Mount Hermon, 
where Wild Wheat was found. From A. Aaronsohn's Agricultural and 
Botanical Explorations in Palestine. Courtesy of the United States De- 
partment of Agriculture. 




Fig. 45. Heads of an ordinary form of the Wild Wheat of Palestine as 
grown at Bard, California. Natural size. From O. F. Cook's Wild Wheat 
of Palestine. Courtesy of the United States Department of Agriculture. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 289 

(9,498 feet in altitude) towards Amy, a little village on its 
eastern slope, I found innumerable forms of this wild 
Triticum growing in abundance at an altitude of 5,250 
feet and less. In some cases tbe whole ear was black; in 
others only the glumes or part of the glumes; in still 
others the awns alone were black. Sometimes the glumes 
were completely glabrous, sometimes very hirsute; in 
some the form of the glume resembled that of Triticum 
durum (durum wheat), in others the development of the 
secondary nerve was similar to that of T. mono coc cum 
(einkorn). I had discovered so many forms that no at- 
tempt at determination could be made. Among these was 
even T. monococcum aegilipoides, a form I had not at all 
expected to find. I could therefore only gather specimens, 
noting their habitat, associations, etc. 

" As soon as I got home I wrote the good news to my 
friends in Berlin. A short notice of the results of this 
trip and an article by Professor Schweinfurth on the im- 
portance of this discovery and on the possibilities which it 
opened up were published. 

" My trip in 1906 merely established the native habitat 
of Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides. It was still necessary 
to find out the extent of the distribution, its habit of 
growth, etc., and I made another trip for this purpose in 
1907. . . . On this trip I was able to show conclusively 
that Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides is indigenous to the 
regions of Mount Hermon and the northern part of the 
Trans-Jordan. The idea that it is a plant escaped from 
cultivation can not be entertained for a moment. In the 
first place Triticum dicoccum (emmer) is not cultivated 
anywhere in Syria or Palestine. I have not been able to 
discover any hybrid or mongrel between this wild wheat 
and the cultivated forms. Second — and this is the im- 
portant point — our Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides rarely 



290 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

appears on soils whicli have been cultivated for any pur- 
pose. It grows only upon the slopes of the most arid 
and rocky hills and in places exposed to the hottest rays 
of the oriental sun." (Figure 44.) 

Aaronsohn's observations have been confirmed by O. F. 
Cook of the United States Department of Agriculture, who 
visited the Holy Land in 1910, found the wild wheat, 
and carried out an independent investigation upon its 
characteristics. Cook reports in his well illustrated 
Bulletin that the wild Triticum is widely distributed on 
the slopes of the Anti-Lebanon range of mountains in 
northern Palestine and Syria, and that it behaves in 
every way as a truly indigenous plant; and he further 
points out that it is especially abundant on limestone 
formations where it often appears to be the dominant 
species. His illustrations show the wild wheat in tufts 
growing on the arid slopes of hills among stones and 
bowlders much in the same manner as its distant relatives 
the Couch-grass or False Wheat (Agropyron repens) and 
the Slender Wheat-grass (A. tenerum) now grow from 
the cracks and crevices of the glaciated rocky hummocks 
which make up so much of the land surface at Kenora 
and other places on the Lake of the Woods. 

The scientific name of the wild wheat used by Aaron- 
sohn is Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides and was chosen be- 
cause the name of the cultivated wheat to which in Aaron- 
sohn's opinion the wild wheat is most closely related (Em- 
mer), is Triticum dicoccum. The triple name Triticum 
dicoccum dicoccoides^ however, is cumbersome and tauto- 
logical, and it makes the wild wheat a variety of a culti- 
vated wheat. Moreover, Cook has doubts based on morpho- 
logical grounds as to the propriety of associating the wild 
wheat so closely with Emmer. Cook has therefore sug- 
gested that the name Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides should 




Fig. 46. Wheat Kernels. A, Wild Wheat showing usual size; B, 
large-seeded variation of Wild Wheat; C, Sonora wheat commonly 
grown in the same locality at Bard, California. All natural size. The 
weight of the individual kernels in A, B, C averaged respectively, 0.032 
gram, 0.071 gram, and 0.038 gram. From O. F. Cook's Wild Wheat of 
Palestine. Courtesy of the United States Department of Agriculture. 




Fig. 47. Classes of Wheat. From left to right: Wheat {Triticum 
vulgare — Marquis ) ; Durum wheat ( Triticum durum — Kubanka ) ; 
Club wheat {Triticum compactum) . Courtesy of Professor John 
Bracken. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 291 

be discarded and that it should be replaced by Triticum 
hermonis. This proposed change in nomenclature not 
only gives to wild wheat the status of an independent 
species which is its just due^ but also serves to commemo- 
rate the spot — Mount Hermon — where the first ear was 
collected. In future, therefore, we shall refer to the 
wild wheat as Triticum hermonis. 

Specimens of Triticum hermonis were brought from 
Palestine to the United States by Aaronsohn, with the 
result that at various experimental stations in that coun- 
try plots of ground are now sown annually with the new 
cereal. The wild wheat has also found its way to west- 
ern Canada and has been grown by Professor Harrison 
at the Agricultural College at Winnipeg and by Professor 
W. P. Thompson on the campus of the University of 
Saskatchewan at Saskatoon. I visited Professor Thomp- 
son in the summer of 1918 in order to become acquainted 
with the nature of his cereal investigations and, of course, 
was shown his little plot of Triticum hermonis. With 
what interest and delight did he and I examine the new- 
comer from Palestine, noting its grass-like habit, its rela- 
tively short straw, and its bending long-bearded heads, 
with their primitive and admirable arrangements for 
scattering the grains ; and with what wonder did we reflect 
upon the possibility that there, at last, before our own 
eyes, was the very species from which had sprung all the 
Marquis and Eed Pife which, all over the West, even 
then, was ripening unto harvest. Evidently we were in 
the presence of a virile vegetable, not dependent for its 
propagation, as are our cultivated wheats, upon the pam- 
pering attentions of mankind, but well fitted by its struc- 
ture and functions to maintain itself in its native habitat 
from generation to generation in open competition with 
the rest of the plant world. 



292 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

VI. The Botanical Classification of Wheats 

In order to appreciate why it is that the wild wheat 
of Palestine has been considered to be the prototype of our 
cultivated wheats, it is necessary to understand how cul- 
tivated wheats have been classified. Eight distinct kinds 
of wheat have been recognized as follows : 

1. Einkorn. 5. Wheat. 

2. Polish Wheat. 6. Club Wheat. 

3. Enuner. 7. Poulard Wheat. 

4. Spelt. 8. Hard or Durum Wheat. 

In the great central spring-wheat region of N^orth Ameri- 
ca, No. 5 or wheat is by far the most important kind, for it 
includes Eed Fife, Marquis, Preston, and Bluestem. E'o. 
8 or durum wheat is also grown in the dryer localities; 
but few farmers in the West are acquainted with either 
einkorn, Polish wheat, emmer, spelt, club wheat, or Pou- 
lard wheat. The following classification is based upon 
the studies of Kornicke and Hackel : 

Triticum 

Section Eutriticum 

I. Triticum monococcum einkorn. 

11. Triticum polonicum Polish wheat. 

III. Triticum^ sativum a collective species. 

1. Triticum dicoccum emmer. 

2. Triticum speltd spelt. 

3. Triticum tenax common wheats. 

a. Triticum vulgare (Triticum CBstivum) .. .wheat. 
h. Triticum compactum club wheat. 

c. Triticum turgidum Poulard wheat. 

d. Triticum durum durum wheat. 

We thus see that in the section Eutriticum of the genus 
Triticum there are three species: Triticum monococcum^ 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE , 293 

T. polonicuonfhj and T. sativum. Triticum sativum is a 
collective species and contains three small species: T. 
dicoccum, T» spelta, and T. tenax. Triticum tenax is- 
in turn subdivided into subspecies: T. vulgar e, T. com- 
pactum^ T. turgidum, and T. durum. 

This classification is essentially artificial and the dis- 
tinctions between the groups are not always clear. Thus 
Kornicke found it almost impossible to distinguish between 
some forms of Triticum durum (durum wheat) and 
Triticum dicoccum (emmer). 

Triticum monococcum holds a place distinct from the 
other kinds of wheat because when crossed with them it 
does not produce fertile hybrids. All the other kinds of 
wheat can be crossed without difficulty. Moreover, a wild 
prototype of Triticum monococcum has been known for a 
long time and Aaronsohn found a wild form of T. mono- 
coccum in Palestine, which is only very slightly different 
from cultivated einkorn. All the species of cultivated 
wheats except einkorn pass so gradually into one another 
that it seems reasonable to suppose that they really belong 
to one species and have had a common origin. 

Aaronsohn definitely regards Triticum hermonis which 
he found in Palestine as the wild prototype or ancestral 
species of all our cultivated wheats except Triticum mono- 
coccum, the einkorn. In the following paragraphs the 
argument which he adduces in support of his view, will be 
quoted verbatim. 

VII. The Brittle Bachis of the Primitive Cereals 

" What," says Aaronsohn, " can we suppose the proto- 
type of wheat to have been, and by what characters can 
it be recognized ? A fragile rachis was undoubtedly one 
of the characters of this wild prototype.^ All who have 
9 The rachis of the head of wheat is the main axial rod or stalk 



294 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

studied the question agree as to this. All agronomists 
and all botanists regard a rigid rachis as an acquired 
characteristic, developed by man under cultivation and 
having a tendency to destroy the plant's natural capacity 
for dissemination. 

" All of the genera and species related to wheat, as 
Aegilops, Agropyron, etc., have the fragile rachis, a neces- 
sity in order that the grain be assured a wide dissemina- 
tion. It is also needful that the grain remain fixed in 
its glumes as a general protection against premature 
germination, decay and destruction by enemies. But this 
characteristic, so useful to the plant itself, was a draw- 
back to its use by man. Wheat with a brittle rachis re- 
quires to be harvested before complete maturity and is 
difficult to handle. Moreover, grains that are held too 
closely in the glumes can not be thrashed with flails, 
but a special system of mills must be used. In Egyptian 
tombs 6,000 years old have been found heaps of emmer 
hulls, a careful inspection of which clearly indicates that 
they were thrashed by such mills, so that their use must 
date from the most ancient times. 

" Wild wheat, the same as wild oats and wild barley, 
must have been provided with the means for ready dis- 
semination. Man, however, naturally wished to develop 
forms which are not so difficult for him to handle, and 
along this line he has succeeded in obtaining a rigid rachis 

wMcli bears the spikelets. Eordeum jubatum, the Wild Barley, 
Squirrel-tail Grass or Skunk-tail Grass of the prairies, has such a 
brittle rachis. As soon as the head is ripe, the rachis breaks up 
into some twenty or more joints to each one of which are attached 
three little spikelets, the center one containing a single grain. 
Every one knows what a successful weed Wild Barley is. It is its 
brittle rachis, however, which makes its dissemination possible. 
Were its rachis to become rigid, as in our cultivated wheats and bar- 
leys, the scattering of its grains would be prevented and no doubt it 
would quickly cease to be noxious. A. H. R. B. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 295 

in barley as well as in wheat. An important difference 
between the cultivated two-rowed barley (Hordeum dir 
stichon) and the wild barley {Hordeum spontaneum) is 
tbe fragile rachis of the latter. But more than this has 
been accomplished with wheat. Forms have been de- 
veloped in which the grains are very readily removed 
from the glumes. In barley and oats this has not been 
done to the same extent. We have, it is true, naked 
varieties of these two cereals, but these varieties have not 
been extensively cultivated, doubtless on account of their 
relatively smaller yield, and until a comparatively recent 
date their cultivation has been confined to the Orient. In 
wheat, on the contrary, naked grains and a rigid rachis 
are the general rule, these two characteristics differentiat- 
ing the cultivated forms from the primitive type and 
making the former incapable of perpetuating itself with- 
out the intervention of man. 

VIII. OuUivated Wheats wiih a Brittle RacMs 

"Among the known cultivated wheats there are three 
that still retain the brittle rachis: Einkorn (Triticum 
fnonococcum) , emmer (Triticum dicoccum) and spelt 
(Triticum spelta). 

" It is known that the cultivation as grain crops of 
einkorn, emmer, and spelt is steadily decreasing. An at- 
tempt has been made in comparatively recent times both 
in this country and in E-ussia to cultivate einkorn and 
emmer as forage plants. It is interesting to note that, 
except for these attempts, these wheats are cultivated to- 
day only by the Basques, ^^ the primitive Swabians,^^ the 

10 The Basques live on both sides of the Pyrenees in Spain and 
France. A. H. E. B. 

11 The Swabians live in the old Kingdom of Wiirttemberg, in Hesse, 
and in the western part of Bavaria. A. H. K. B. 



296 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

Serbes and that peculiar people the Bactrians of Persia. 
^^ The cultivated wheats with a rigid rachis are there- 
fore derived from the wheats with a brittle rachis. But 
of the three species which have this common character, 
which one shall we select as the prototype and why make 
this selection to the exclusion of others ? 

IX. EinJcorn and Its Prototype Distinct from other 
Wheats 

^^ More than fifty years ago Balansa discovered Triticum 
monococcum cegilipoides in the wild state. This differs 
from the cultivated Triticum monococcum (Einkorn) only 
in minute characters and is without doubt its prototype. 
Balansa believed that he had found the progenitor of the 
cultivated wheats, an opinion that Haussknecht also ac- 
cepted at the time. But experiments in crossing under- 
taken more than fifty years ago by Vilmorin led him to 
assert that whereas all the other species of wheats crossed 
with each other perfectly and gave mongrels, or fertile off- 
spring, he had never succeeded in crossing Triticum 
monococcum with any other wheat. Later, Beyerinck 
succeeded in producing the cross, but the products were 
strict hybrids; that is, they were all sterile. More re- 
cently still, Professor von Tschermak, who took up Vil- 
morin' s experiments, met with the same failure. He has 
succeeded in crossing Triticum monococcum with Triticum 
ovatum which, as we have seen, may in turn be crossed 
with Triticum oestivum; but neither he nor any one else 
has succeeded in crossing Triticum monococcum with any 
other wheat. 

" Let us note, however, that in the case of Triticum 
polonicum there was difficulty in crossing, because of the 
peculiar form of its glumes, until a particular operative 
technique had been worked out. In view of this we may 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 297 

question whether the failure with einkorn was not also 
caused by a faulty technique. We may remark in this 
connection that, as Doctor Trabut observed/^ no one 
has ever succeeded in crossing the two varieties of Anagal- 
lis arvensis, ccerulea and phoenicia, although the only 
difference between the two is that the former has blue 
and the latter pink flowers. But we can not on this 
account class them as distinct species. 

'^ In so far, therefore, as the lack of sexual affinity 
between two related forms justifies us in recognizing 
in them two distinct species, Triticum monococcumin.vist 
be considered as standing alone, and it cannot be regarded 
as the progenitor of the cultivated wheats. 

" From the historical point of view, also, we may re- 
ject einkorn as the progenitor of wheat. Its cultivation 
can not have gone back to very ancient times, since the 
cultivated form differs so little from the wild one. The 
only evidence that we possess of any antiquity is that 
Schliemann discovered it in his celebrated excavations of 
ancient Troy, showing that it was cultivated there. ^^ But 
the other cultivated wheats are traced back for thousands 
of years before this. 

" Spelt and emmer, then, are the only two forms re- 
maining to be considered, but we have no ancient remains 
of the cultivation of spelt, nor is there any mention of it 
in literature until toward the beginning of the Christian 
era. 

12 Bulletin de la Societe Botanique de France, Vol. 68, p. 182. 

13 This evidence for the antiquity of einkorn has turned out to be 
worthless, for Aaronsohn now reports that the supposed einkorn 
found at Troy was afterwards identified by Wittmach as barley on 
the basis of a microscopical examination. Vide 0. F. Cook, Wild 
Wheat in Palestine, Bulletin No. 274, U. S. Department of Agri- 
culture, 1913, p. 26. A. H. R. B. 



298 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

X. Emmer the Only Possible Prototype of True Wheat 

" The species of grain of the cultivation of which we 
have the oldest records is emmer. It is tme that durum 
wheat has heen found in Egypt in some tombs of the first 
dynasty — that is four thousand years before the Christian 
era — but emmer is found both in far greater abundance 
and in all of the tombs. It is not at the present time cul- 
tivated anywhere in Egypt, durum wheat having since 
historic times taken its place. 

" Emmer has been found in the lake dwellings of 
Wangen and Robenhausen, which date back to the end 
of the neolithic epoch, a little before the bronze age. 
This, therefore, is the only species which has been cul- 
tivated from the very beginning of civilization, and we are 
justified in asserting it to be the progenitor of our culti- 
vated wheats. This explains why it was so desirable to 
find the wild form.'' 

Every one will admit that the wild wheat of Palestine 
possesses all the characters that specialists expected to 
find in the primitive ancestor or prototype of our cultivated 
common wheats; but such characters, as Cook has pointed 
out, might be expected to occur in any wild relative of these 
wheats. These characters, therefore, do not afford abso- 
lute proof of the parental position of Triticum hermonis 
in respect to our cultivated wheats. It is possible that 
other wild wheats still remain to be discovered in Pales- 
tine or in neighboring countries which aTC much less well- 
known botanically, and that one such species may be found 
to stand still nearer to our cultivated wheats than does 
Triticum hermonis. Cook ^^ has suggested that the real 
prototype may be a wild species growing somewhere in 
Arabia or elsewhere in western Asia which has heads with 

14 0. F. Cook, loc. cit., p. 26. 




Fig. 50. Head of a large- 
seeded variation of the Wild 
Wheat {Triticum hermonis) with 
the spikejets falling apart. 
From O. F. Cook's Wild Wheat 
of Palestine. Courtesy of the 
United States Department of 
Agriculture. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 299 

a non-brittle rachis and whicli is therefore so like our cul- 
tivated wheats that it differs from them in scarcely any- 
thing except that it grows wild and maintains itself from 
generation to generation without the aid of man. How- 
ever, it may be urged against the likelihood of finding such 
a wild wheat that our cultivated wheats, although grown 
on such diverse soils, in such varied parts of the world, 
and so extensively, have nowhere succeeded in escaping 
from cultivation and maintaining themselves in the wild 
state. It is also possible that the primitive wild ancestor 
of our cultivated wheats has become extinct leaving be- 
hind only close relatives such as Tfitioum Jiermonis. 
However, the writer is inclined, tentatively at least, to 
accept Aaronsohn's conclusion. At any rate there can be 
no doubt that the wild wheat of Palestine has a better claim 
to be considered the ancestor of our cultivated wheats 
than any other known species. Even if, with the progress 
of botanical knowledge, Triticum Jiermonis should, prove 
not to be the prototype we are seeking, this species will 
doubtless be found to be extremely similar to that proto- 
type. It must therefore continue to be one of the most 
interesting of all plants. 

XI. Cross-Fertilization 

The wild wheat of Palestine differs from our common 
cultivated wheats in that it is well adapted for cross-pol- 
lination. Some of the flowers, says Cook,!^ j^^^^ ^j^eip 
anthers pushed out beyond the glumes before the shedding 
of the pollen, and, conversely, in some flowers the glumes 
spread apart so that the pollen is admitted before the 
anthers mature. The pushing outwards of the anthers 
beyond the tips of the glumes allows the pollen to be scat- 
is 0. F. Cook, loc. cit., p. 51. 



300 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

tered by the wind, and the spreading of the glumes permits 
wind-blown pollen to fall upon the stigmas. The two 
glumes of a flower, when opening occurs, separate at an 
angle of from 30° to 40° so as to form a broad tube or 
funnel with the expanded stigmas at the bottom. Al- 
though well protected on all sides, the stigmas can be seen 
in the open flower bj looking in from above. ^^ 

Cook, when studying pollination in the wild wheat, 
found indications of sexual dimorphism, ^''^ i. e., that there 
are two forms of flowers regarded sexually. In some 
plants which he examined, the flowers were proterogynous, 
the stigmas being exposed before the adjacent anthers 
had matured, whilst in other plants the flowers appeared 
to be proterandroiis, the anthers being exserted at a time 
when the stigmas were still only partly developed. Seed 
was also found to be produced in some heads that had not 
emerged from their sheaths, from which we may con- 
clude that some forms of Triticum hermonis are capable of 
self-fertilizing their own flowers. Cook's observations go 
to show that in the wild wheat of Palestine the usual 
mode of pollination is cross-pollination. 

The Grass Family or Gramine^e, as a group, possesses 
flowers with floral mechanisms adapted to secure cross- 
pollination; and, for gxasses in general, we must look 
upon this mode of pollination as primitive and ancestral. 
The wild wheat of Palestine, which is a wild grass, there- 
fore resembles most other grass species in having cross- 
pollinated flowers. In our cultivated wheats, on the other 
hand, self-pollination is the rule, although cross-pollina- 
tion may and does take place occasionally.^^ We may 

i6/6icZ., p. 15. 

17 Ibid. 

18 Vide Chapter IV, Section V, on Bed Bols the Product of a Natu- 
ral Cross. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 301 

therefore regard our cultivated wheats as sexually degen- 
erate. Since the wild wheat of Palestine has cross-fer- 
tilized flowers, there seems good reason for supposing that 
in our cultivated wheats self-pollination came to replace 
cross-pollination under conditions of domestication. 

An attempt will now be made to summarize some of the 
chief observations which have been made upon the open- 
ing of the flowers and mode of pollination of our coromon 
wheats. 

The results of careful observation by botanists and 
cerealists upon the pollination of cultivated wheats seem 
to show: (1) that in cooler northern regions, such as 
northern Europe, the northern part of the United States, 
and Canada, self-pollination is the rule but that cross- 
pollination may and does take place occasionally, (2) that 
in warmer regions cross-pollination is more frequent, and 
(3) that in hot dry localities, such as the canal colonies 
of the Punjab where the crop can only be grown by means 
of irrigation, cross-pollination is quite common. ^^ 

Delphino observed that at flowering time the glumes 
diverge rapidly and suddenly. At the same time, the an- 
thers project laterally, open, and empty about one-third 
of their pollen on the stigmas of the same flower, while 
the rest of the pollen is scattered in the air. This happens 
in about one minute and, after a quarter of an hour, the 
glumes close again. Delphino made experiments which 
prove that automatic self-pollination results in the setting 
of good fruits. 2*^ 

Delphino and Kornicke found that a single wheat flower 

19 A. Howard, Gabrielle L. C. Howard, and Rahman Abdur, The 
Economic Significance of Natural Cross-fertilization in India, Me- 
moirs of the Department of Agriculture in India, botanical series 
Vol. Ill, October, 1906. 

20 Vide P. Knuth, Handbook of Flower Pollination, translated by 
J. R. A. Davis, Oxford, Vol. Ill, 1909, p. 529. 



302 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

remains open for only about a quarter of an hour but tbat 
the flowering period for a whole head has a duration of 
four days, so that only a small number of flowers are found 
open at any one time.^-*^ It has been noticed by many 
observers that^ in a single head, the first flowers to open 
are the median ones and that flowering proceeds upwards 
and downwards in the head, the last flowers to open being 
those in the spikelets at the head's extreme ends. 

Kirchner's observations support those of Delphino, and 
are as follows: The flowers which are homogamous, 
gradually open so widely that the tips of the glumes are 
about 4 Tnm (Yq inch) apart. As a flower opens, the an- 
thers of the stamens dehisce apically and about one-third 
of the pollen falls into the flower. After this the anthers 
come to project outside the glumes so that they scatter 
their pollen into the air. Self-pollination therefore takes 
place regularly but cross-pollination by means of the wind 
is not excluded. Kirchner also observed that the flowering 
period for a single head was four days in length. ^^ 

Godron found that the flowers open in the early morn- 
ing and that the extent of their opening depends upon 
weather conditions. His observations were as follows: 
At 16°C. (61°r.) the flowers open at 4.30 a. m. and close 
again at 6.30 to 7 a. m. If, when the flower opens, the 
anthers tip over the ends of the glumes quickly, the 
stigmas of the flowers as a rule are not dusted with pollen. 
Under less favorable circumstances, the flower opens more 
slowly and the stigraas do not project until they have been 
dusted with pollen from the same flower. At a low tem- 
perature, 12°-13°C. (54°-56°r.), or after several days' 
rain, the flowers remain closed and fertilization takes 

21 Ihid. 

22 Ihid. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 303 

place without the flowers opening (pseudo-cleistogamons 
fertilization).^^ 

Rimpau has also observed the effects of temperature on 
the opening of wheat flowers. He states that at 12°-13°C. 
(54°-56°r.) the glumes do open a little hut that com- 
plete opening does not take place under 16° C. (61° F.). 
He found that the opening of the glumes is not limited 
entirely to the morning hours but may take place at any 
hour of the day or even in the evening. The length of 
time during which the flowers are open depends on the 
temperature and the dryness of the air: at 23°C. (73°F.) 
the flowers closed again in 15-20 minutes, but at lower 
temperatures closing took a much longer time. E-impau 
observed that the anthers dehisce before they have reached 
the upper margins of the glumes by elongation, so that 
automatic self-pollination is regularly effected in every 
flower. ^^ 

Rimpau removed the anthers from 85 wheat flowers and 
yet 50 of them set fruit. He therefore concluded that if 
self-pollination were not to take place, pollination by 
crossing would still ensure the production of seed. He 
found that crossing, as judged by the average number of 
haulms formed, gave rise to a more vigorous off-spring 
than self-pollination, the result being seen even in the 
fourth generation. ^^ 

The flowers of wheat only open once and for a very short 
time. The actual opening which results in the divergence 
of the glumes and the exposure of the sexual organs, is 
effected by two small scales known as lodicules which lie at 
the base of the flower between the ovary and the outer 
glume. As a flower opens, the lodicules become fleshy and 

23 lUd. 

24 Hid. 

25 lUd. 



304 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

succulent and more or less spheroidally swollen at the 
base. By swelling up in this way, they overcome the 
resistance of the elastic outer glume and move it out- 
wards. After a short time the lodicules shrivel up again 
into small thin scales thus allowing the outer glume to 
resume its former position and close the flower again. 
The action of the lodicules in opening the flowers of 
grasses was first investigated in 1880 by Haeckel, and his 
observations were confirmed by Rimpau in 1883. When 
a flower opens, the filaments of the three stamens grow 
very rapidly in length, and it is this rapid growth which 
causes the anthers to be pushed out of the flower over 
the ends of the glumes. This observation was first made 
by Arkenasy and afterwards confirmed by Rimpau.^^ 

Kerner states that the most favorable conditions for 
pollination in most Grasses prevail in the early morn- 
ing, at an hour when there is still some dew lying in the 
meadows, when the first rays of sunshine fall obliquely 
upon the flowers, when the temperature is rising gently, 
and when a light breeze sets the spikes and pannicles in 
motion. " Under such conditions as these the phenomena 
of flowering and pollination are accomplished with as- 
tonishing rapidity. In some Grasses an observer may 
see the glumes relax and spring open, the stamens grow 
out, the anthers open, and the pollen scattered, all in the 
space of a few minutes." ^"^ Wheat is only a glorified 
grass and although its flowers open early in the morning 
there are other grasses which, under mid-European con- 
ditions, open their flowers just as early or even earlier. 
The time at which the flowers of wheat open relatively 
to those of other grass species is indicated by Kerner in 

26 p. Knuth, loc. oit., p. 515. 

27 Anton Kerner von Marilaim, The Natural History of Plants, 
translated by F. W. Oliver, London, Vol. II, 1895, pp. 141-142. 



THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 305 

the following statement. ^' The earliest discharge of pol- 
len (in the Graminese) begins in the height of summer 
between 4 and 5 a. m. and the plants which take part in it 
thus early are the Meadow-grass (Poa), Koeleria, and 
Avena elatior. A little later between 5 and 6 o'clock 
conies the turn of the Quaking-grass (Briza media) and 
Aira ccespitosa, and of Wheat and Barley {Triticum, 
Hordeum). Between 6 and Y pollination occurs in Eye 
and in a great number of different Grasses which grow 
in meadowSj such as Cock's-foot-grass (Dactylis) , Andro- 
pogon^ the Brome-grasses (BracJiy podium) and many 
species of Fescue (Festuca). Between 7 and 8 o'clock 
the pollen is liberated from Oats of the Trisetum group, 
from the Fox-tail-grass (Alopecuras) , Timothy Grass 
(Phleum) and the Sweet Vernal Grass (Anthoxanthum) . 
An interval now intervenes^ at least among the indigenous 
Grasses. Of exotic species which are cultivated in gar- 
dens the following discharge their pollen in the course of 
the forenoon, viz., the Millets {P'anicum milliaceum and 
Sorghum) between 8 and 9 o'clock; Setaria Italica and 
the Brazilian Pampas-grass (Gynerium. argenteum) be- 
tween 9 and 10 o'clock. Toward noon indigenous 
Grasses come again into play. About 11 o'clock pollina- 
tion takes place in most species of the Bent-grass genus 
(Agrostis) and between 12 and 1 in Melic-grass (Melica), 
Molinia, Mat-grass (Nardus), Elymus, Sclerocliloa, and 
several species of Calamogrostis. In the course of the 
afternoon the process takes place in a few isolated species 
as, for instance, in some Brome-grasses at 2 o'clock, in 
a few species of Oat (Avena) at 3, in Agropyrum at 4, 
and in Aira flexuosa between 5 and 6. It is worthy of 
note that Soft-gTass (Holcus), under favorable atmos- 
pheric conditions, opens its glumes, pushes forth its 
anthers, and liberates pollen twice a day, once in the 



306 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 

morning about 6 o'clock and a second time in the even- 
ning at about 7 — provided always that the temperature 
of the air is not less than 14°C. (5Y°r.). The entire 
process lasts in most cases from fifteen to twenty minutes 
for each flower." ^^ 

XII. Conclusion 

Here the writer must bring to a conclusion his re- 
marks upon Wheat — the cereal which is and has been 
of such vast importance to the world, which was the 
chief basis of the ancient civilization of the lands of 
the Mediterranean, and which is still the main source 
of food for the civilization of modem Europe, of a large 
part of Asia, of iN'orth and South America, and of Aus- 
tralia. If there had been no wheat upon the earth dur- 
ing the last 25,000 years or if wheat had been present 
but primitive man had not succeeded in domesticating 
it, it is certain that the course of man's evolution would 
have been greatly retarded and that the 'New World, 
where these pages have been penned, would wear to-day 
a very different aspect to that with which we are familiar. 
That bread-eaters should desire to know more about the 
origin and history of the cereal which sustains them is 
most natural. If this curiosity should be satisfied to 
some extent by what has been gathered together in this 
book, the author will feel that his labor has been well 
rewarded. 

z&IUd., p. 142. 



THE E'NI> 



PRINTED IN THE FNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



INDEX 



Aaronsolm, A., brought wild 
wheat to the United States, 
291; on the origin of wheat, 
285; rediscovery of wild wheat 
by, 286-291; regards Triticum 
hermonis as the wild proto- 
type of cultivated wheats, 293- 
299. 

Abdur, Rahman, on natural 
crossing of wheats in India, 
301. 

Admixtures of wheat, 70-71; in 
North Dakota, 161. 

Advance toward the north of the 
belts of wheat and corn, 187- 
190. 

Agassiz, and Marquis wheat, 
152; wheats crossed at, 148. 

Agrarian movement, the, 141- 
143. 

Agriculture, goddess of, 280- 
283; its importance and an- 
tiquity, 278-279. 

Agropyron rep ens and A. tene- 
rum at Kenora, 290, 

Agropyrum, time of pollination 
of, 305. 

Agrostis, time of pollination of, 
305. 

Aira caespitosa and A. ftexuosa, 
time of pollination of, 305. 

Albert barley, C. E. Saunders 
and, 240. 

Alberta, durum wheat in, 42; 
and hulless barley, 240; and 
Prelude wheat, 184; and the 
shelling of wheat, 197; and 



the Survey Board, 97; and 
the agrarian movement, 141 ; 
and the yield of Marquis wheat, 
190; export of grain from, 51; 
flour mills of, 134; introduc- 
tion of Marquis into, 157; 
Marquis wins prize from, 173; 
spring and winter wheat in, 
35-36; wheat sent through 
Panama Canal, 52-53 ; yield of 
Marquis on C. S. Noble's farm, 
191-192. 

Alcock, A. W., and the Dominion 
Grain Research Laboratory, 
102-104; and the Panama 
Canal, 52-53. 

Allied governments, negotiate 
with Board of Grrain Super- 
visors, 129. 

Allies, and Canadian flour, 136; 
flour purchases for, 124; pur- 
chase of wheat for, 120. 

Alpha wheat and parentage of 
Prelude, 186. 

Alopecurus, time of pollination 
of, 305. 

'^Amoeha histolytica, as cause of 
the Bloody Flux, 27. 

Anagallis, difl&culty of crossing, 
297. 

Andrews Grain Company, and 
Marquis wheat, 160. 

Andropogon, time of pollination 
of, 305. 

Angus Mackay Farm Seed Com- 
pany, 159, 160. 

Anthoxanthum, time of pollina- 
tion of, 305. 



307 



308 



INDEX 



Apples, hardy, for the North-' 

west, 145. 
Arabia, a wild wheat possibly 

grows in, 298. 
Arctic circle, wheat-growing 

near, 181-182. 
Argentina, wheat crop of, 38, 39, 

40; lack of wheat surplus, 123. 
Aristotle, mentions rust disease, 

283. 
Arkangelsk, and wheat-growing, 

182. 
Arkenasy, on elongation of stam- 

inal filaments of wheat, 304. 
Arny, A. C, comparison of Min- 
nesota wheats by ( Figs. 29, 30, 

31), 166, 170, 171; on yield of 

Marquis, 192. 
Arny, wild wheat found at, 289. 
Arthur pea, 240-241, 
Ascherson, Professor, and the 

wild wheat, 286. 
Athens and agriculture, 281. 
Atlantic Ocean, and Marquis 

wheat, 158; and the Panama 

Canal, 53. 
Australia, and white wheats, 

260; export of wheat from, 

hindered during war, 123; 

Farrer's wheat-breeding work 

in, 259-260; wheat eaten in, 

306; wheat exported in bags 

from, 52 ; wheat varieties from, 

146. 
Avena elatior, time of pollination 

of, 305. 
Awns, of Marquis wheat, 223; of 

wild wheat, 288. 



B 



Babylonia, wheat of, 279. 
Bactrians, cultivated einkorn 
and emmer, 296. 



Bailey, C. H., comparison of 
Minnesota wheat by (Figs. 29, 
30, 31), 166, 170, 171; milling 
and baking tests, 203 ; on Mar- 
quis in Montana, 166; on Mar- 
quis in the Pacific North-west, 
165; on quality in wheat, 198- 
199. 

Baking oven, electric, for experi- 
ments, 103. 

Baking strength of flour, 199- 
200. 

Balansa, discovered wild einkorn, 
296. 

Baldwin Flour Mills and Mar- 
quis wheat, 161. 

Ball, C. B., on percentage of 
Marquis in the wheat crop, 
251. 

Ball, C. K. and J. A. Clark, de- 
scribe Marquis wheat, 171- 
172; experiments with Mar- 
quis, 203-204; on geography of 
Marquis, 164; on increase of 
Marquis, 168; on Marquis 
crops, 160; on Marquis west of 
the Rocky Mountains, 166; 
on Preston wheat 149; on 
yield of Marquis, 204. 

Baltimore, export of wheat from, 
50-51. 

Banks, and grain exchanges, 
119; finance crop movements, 
130-134; importance of, 133. 

Barley, and a distillery, 18; evo- 
lution of, 294-295; found at 
Troy, 297; improvements of, 
239-240; in 1813 in Selkirk 
settlement, 4; in 1822, in cen- 
sus, 16; origin of, 285; time 
of pollination of, 305; sown 
in 1816, 7; wild species in 
Manitoba, dissemination of, 
294; wild species in Palestine, 
286. 



INDEX 



309 



Barnes and Company, 0. J., and 
Marquis wheat, 161. 

Basques, cultivate einkorn and 
emmer, 295. 

Bawlf, W. E., on Dominion con- 
trol of grain trade, 129. 

Bayali wheat, in Australia, 259. 

Bearded Fife wheat, 149. 

Beef, price of, in 1826, 19. 

Belgian Relief Commisson, pur- 
chase of wheat for, 124. 

Belgium, and Marquis wheat, 
228. 

Bell, C. N., on Passenger pig- 
eons in Manitoba, 4-5; on 
weeds introduced with seed- 
wheat in 1820, 13. 

Berg, Jacob, and origin of Min- 
nesota No. 23 corn, 188. 

Berlin, and the wild wheat, 286, 
287, 289. 

Bermann, M., and the wild 
wheat, 287. 

Beyerinck, wheat hybrids of, 296, 

Biffin, R. H., on rust-resisting 
wheats in England, 179. 

Birchard, F. J., and the Domin- 
ion Grain Research Labora- 
tory, 102-104; and the Pan- 
ama Canal, 52-53. 

Birds, injury of crops by, 4. 

Birtle, and Marquis wheat, 174. 

Black Sea, and Red Fife wheat, 
210. 

Black, W. J., on corn grown in 
Manitoba, 189. 

Bloody Flux disease, 26-27. 

Bluestem wheat, and Marquis in 
U. S. A., 164; and natural 
crossing with, 266-267; and 
Quality wheat, 236; and rust 
disease, 180; and shelling, 
187; and time of ripening, 
175; classification of, 292; im- 
provement of, by Haynes, 224- 



225; in Canada, 180; in Min- 
nesota, 163; mixed in North 
Dakota, 162; percentage in 
crop, 167-169; replacement by 
Marquis in Minnesota, 246- 
248; yield of, in the United 
States, 193-196. 

Board of Grain Commissioners, 
and Board of Grain Supervis- 
ors, 127; and Dominion Grain 
Research Laboratory, 102; and 
rules of Winnipeg Survey 
Board, 97 ; and weighing grain, 
100; appoints Grain Standards 
Board, 104; when created, 68. 

Board of Grain Supervisors, con- 
stitution of, 127-128; func- 
tions of, 127; prices fixed by, 
92; regulates export of wheat, 
129. 

Boats, number of, in Selkirk set- 
tlement in 1849, 27. 

Bobs wheat, origin of, 259-260; 
sold by Seager Wheeler, 270; 
studied by John Bracken, 270- 
271. 

BoUey, H. L., estimate of Mar- 
quis wheat grown in North 
Dakota, 161; inspects Cana- 
dian fields of Marquis, 159; on 
the shelling of Bluestem wheat, 
197. 

Bornmiiller, failed to find wild 
wheat, 287. 

Boss, Andrew, discovers early- 
ripening corn varieties, 187- 
188; on Marquis wheat, 162; 
on Northwestern Dent corn, 
190. 

Boston, export of wheat from, 
50-51. 

Box-cars, for transporting wheat, 
57-59; emptying of, at termi- 
nal elevators, 52; how contents 
are known, 83; numbers upon, 



310 



INDEX 



82; overj&lling of, 86-87; plug- 
ging of, 86; samples taken 
from, 79-81. 

Brachypodium, time of pollina- 
tion of, 305. 

Bracken, John, his red-seeded se- 
lections from Bobs wheat, 270- 
271; illustrations supplied by, 
157; 200, 291, 294, 295; on the 
rust disease, 178-179; on 
wheat growing, 41. 

Bran layer, color of, 261-262. 

Brandon, Experimental Farm at, 
26; flour mills at, 135; Mar- 
quis wheat introduced at, 157; 
Marquis tests at, 175; wheat- 
crossing at, 148; wheat 
crosses made at, 152; yield of 
Marquis at, 191, 196. 

Bread, and civilization, 230; and 
Quality wheat, 234; eaters of, 
and the history of wheat, 306; 
from Marquis wheat, 158; 
making of, and wheat color, 
262. 

British Columbia, flour mills of, 
134; Marquis wheat in, 157; 
wheats crossed in, 148. 

British Government, and the 
Wheat Export Company, 120. 

British Isles, and Marquis wheat, 
228. 

British market, and wheat color, 
260-261. 

British miller, 200. 

British public, assists Red River 
settlement, 28. 

Briza media, time of pollination 
of, 305. 

Brown-Duvel moisture-tester, de- 
scription of, 89. 

Bryce, G., on history of Selkirk 
settlers, 2, 13, 32. 

Buenos Ayres, and the Winnipeg 
Grain Exchange, 105. 



Buffalo, as a source of food, 8, 
11, 14, 18, 23. 

Buffalo, seed Marquis made 
available at, 164-165; wheat 
traffic through, 49-50. 

Bulk wheat, shipment through 
Panama Canal, 52, 103. 

Bull, C. P., a corn selection 
made by, 188. 

Bunyip wheat, in Australia, 259. 

Burbank, Luther, and C. E. 
Saunders, 228-233 ; apprecia- 
tion of, as a plant-breeder, 
228-232; his potato and 
plums, 232 ; his Quality wheat, 
233-237. 

Buying and selling of wheat, at 
the Grain Exchange, 111-118; 
war competition for, 124. 



Calamogrostis, time of pollina- 
tion of, 305. 

Calgary, cars inspected at, 91; 
flour mill at, 135; government 
elevator at, 64, 102; inspection 
of grain at, 78. 

California, and Burbank's new 
wheats, 233-237; fruit-grow- 
ing industry of, 231-232; yield 
of Marquis wheat in, 192. 

Camas Prairie, Marquis wheat 
at, 165. 

Campbell, Allan, on ripening of 
corn in Manitoba, 190. 

Canada, debt owed by, to in- 
ventors, 138; increased wealth 
brought to, by Marquis, 252- 
257 ; the granary of the British 
Empire, 34. 

Canada Grain Act, chief features 
of, 68; weighing provisions of, 
99. 



INDEX 



311 



Canadian Agriculturist, The, and 
the origin of Red Fife wheat, 
207. 

Canadian Council of Agriculture, 
127. 

Canadian Northern Railway, and 
the wheat funnel, 49; terminal 
elevator of, 102. 

Canadian Pacific Railway, and 
the wheat funnel, 49; building 
of the, 33-34; encouraged 
wheat-growing, 217-218; leased 
in elevator, 142; prizes of- 
fered by, 172; record haulage 
of cars on, 66; terminal ele- 
vator of, 102; Transcona ele- 
vator of, 64. 

Canadian Seed Growers Associa- 
tion, 262, 274, 275. 

Canadians, and Marquis wheat, 
144. 

Canoes, number of, in 1849, 27. 

Carleton, M, A,, estimate of loss 
due to rust, 180. 

Cars of grain, number inspected, 
91. 

Carts, number of, in 1849, 27. 

Cary, Captain, his experimental 
farm, 25. 

Cattle, and corn, 189--190; num- 
ber of, in 1849, 27. 

Cedar wheat, in Australia, 259. 

Census of Red River settlement, 
in 1822, 16; in 1849, 27. 

Central Experimental Farm, 
Hard Red Calcutta wheat at, 
204-205; organized by W. 
Saunders, 144; wheat crosses 
made at, 149. 

Cereals, prototypes of, 285-286. 

Ceres and the cerealia, 282-283. 

Certificate of grade, 96. 

Cherry, Dr., on value of Farrer's 
wheat-breeding work, 260. 

Chess matches on farms, 140. 



Chewing test, for gluten contents 

of wheat, 155, 201-203, 265- 

266. 
Chicago, and Velvet Chaff wheat, 

149; highest price of wheat at, 

124; prices posted at Winnipeg 

Grain Exchange, 105, 116. 
Chinese, and origin of wheat, 

280; wheat grown by, in early 

times, 279. 
Chopping roots, engine for, 139. 
Churches, number of, in Red 

River settlement in 1849, 27. 
Churn, how driven, 138, 
Cities and agriculture, 33-34; 

278-279. 
Clark, J. A., vide Ball and 

Clark. 
Clearing House of the Winnipeg 
- Grain Exchange, description 

of, 109-116; advantage to 

traders of, 113, 115. 
Cleveland wheat, in Australia, 

259. 
Climate, and wheat quality, 199; 

claim respecting, for Quality 

wheat, .234, 236. 
Clock, tell prices of wheat, 117- 

118. 
Club wheat, classification of, 

292; replaced by Red Fife, 218, 

227. 
Cobourg, and Red Fife wheat, 

214. 
Colborne district of Ontario, 213. 
Colorado, Marquis wheat in, 164. 
Color, of flour, 199; of gluten of 

Marquis wheat, 155; of wheat 

grains, 221, 236, 260-262. 
Colquhoun, M., on the origin of 

Red Fife wheat, 210. 
Columella, mentions rust disease, 

283. 
Comeback wheat, in Australia, 

259. 



312' 



INDEX 



Commission merchants, at Grain 
Exchange, 106; . borrow for 
banks, 131. 

Commission rule, value of, 107. 

Consumers, represented on Board 
of Grain Commissioners, 128. 

Contract grades, of wheat, 111- 
112. 

Cook, 0. F., investigations on 
wild wheat, 290; illustrations 
by, 289, 290, 298; on cross-fer- 
tilization of wild wheat, 300; 
on the origin of wheat, 298- 
299. 

Corbett, J. C, on Burbank's new 
fruits, 232. 

Corn, and wheat, battle with, 
170; at Kosthern, 273; in 1822, 
16; northern advance of, 187- 
190. 

Coimcil of Assiniboia, 28. 

Country elevators, controlled by 
farmers, 142; cost of building, 
131; definition of, 53; descrip- 
tion of, 56-57; shipping grain 
from, 57-58; weighing wheat 
at, 98-100. 

Country Gentleman and Culti- 
vator, and Red Fife wheat, 
206. 

Cream-separator, how driven, 
138. 

Credit, importance of, 133; 
principle of velocity of, 132; 
use of, in crop movements, 
130-131. 

Crete, wheat of, 279. 

Crookston Milling Company, and 
Marquis wheat, 160. 

Crops, destruction of by hail, 
48; financing movement of, 
130-134; statistics of, 35-40; 
values of, in Canada, 256; val- 
ues of, for Marquis wheat, 243- 
246. 



Cross, products of, between Red 
Fife and Hard Red Calcutta 
wheats, 205. 

Cross-bred kernels, how pro- 
duced, 219-221. 

Cross-bred wheats, a remarkable 
product of modern botany, 
187. 

Cross-breeding of wheats, results 
of, 226. 

Cross-fertilization, in wild wheat 
and other grasses, 299-306. 

Crossing of wheat, occurs nat- 
urally, observed by Rimpau, 
303. 

Crossing of wheat species, 296. 

Crossing wheats, by W. Saunders 
and his assistants, 148-150; 
failure with einkorn, 293; 
genealogical trees of Marquis, 
Ruby, and Prelude, 185; Mar- 
quis results from, 152; Red 
Bobs the product of a natural 
cross, 264-268. 

Cross-pollination, in cultivated 
wheat, 300-301 ; in wild wheat, 
300; natural, of wheats, 265- 
267; of wild grasses, Kerner's 
observations on, 304-306. 

Cultivation of plants and civili- 
zation, 278-279. 

Currants, called Climax and 
Saunders, 145. 



Daotylis, time of pollination of, 

305. 
Dakota Climax wheat, 149. 
Dakotas, and milling, 31. 
Damp wheat, milling value of, 

104. 
Danzig, and the origin of Red 

Fife wheat, 207-209, 214. 
Dawson, Robert, and the origin 



INDEX 



313 



of Dawson's Golden Chaff 
wheat, 224. 

Dawson City, and Prelude wheat, 
184. 

Dawson's Golden Chaff wheat, a 
mutation, 226. 

de Candolle, Alphonse, on the ori- 
gin of wheat, 279. 

de Cow and Company, and seed 
corn, 187. 

Delphino, on pollination of wheat 
flowers, 301-302. 

Demeter, and the origin of wheat, 
280-282. 

de Meuron soldiers, 19-20. 

de Vries, and dwarf Evening 
Primrose, 226; and the muta- 
tion theory, 229; on Burbank's 
contribution to the California 
fruit-growing industry, 231; 
on Burbank's potato, 232; on 
selection of cereals, 224. 

Dirigibles, possible future use of, 
140. 

Disease, resistance to, of wheat, 
226. 

;Dissemination, of wheat, 294- 
295. 

Dobbin, F. H., on the origin of 
Ked Fife wheat, 211-215. 

Dockage, setting of, 82, 88. 

Downy Riga wheat, and parent- 
age of Ruby, 186. 

Drills, for sowing wheat, 45. 

Drought, and wheat-growing, 48. 

Duluth, and export of Red Fife 
in 1876, 30, 216; and Winnipeg 
Grain Exchange, 105; cars in- 
spected at, 91 ; grading system 
at, 69; inspection of grain at, 
78. 

Dunvegan, and Ladoga wheat, 
181. 

Durum wheat, and wild wheat, 
289; classification of, 292; in 



tombs in Egypt, 298; in west- 
ern Canada, 42; percentage in 
crop of, 167-169; yield of, in 
the United States, 193-196. 

Dwarf Marquis wheat, origin of, 
225; a mutation, 226. 

Dysentery, in the Red River Set- 
tlement, 27. 



E. 



Earliness in wheat, and frost, 
180-183; and gain of working- 
time, 175-176; and rust, .176- 
180; and storms, 176; difficulty 
of combining high yield with, 
185; of Marquis, 154-155; of 
Marquis and Red Fife, 175; of 
Marquis and Prelude, 184; of 
Red Bobs, Marquis, and 
Kitchener, 270. 

Early Java wheat, and Preston, 
149. 

Early Red Fife wheat, a muta- 
tion, 226; and parentage of 
Red Bobs, 262, 263, 267-268; 
grown by Seager Wheeler, 262, 
274. 

Early Riga wheat at Fort Ver- 
milion, 183. 

Early-ripening corn varieties, 
187-188. 

Edgar, W. C, on a revolution in 
the milling industry, 31. 

Edmonton, Dunvegan, and Brit- 
ish Columbia Railway, 181, 183. 

Edmonton, wheat shipped 
through, 183. 

Education, cost of, and Marquis 
wheat, 256. 

Eggs of wheat-plants, fertiliza- 
tion of, 219-220. 

Egyptians, and the origin of 
wheat, 280. 



314 



INDEX 



Egypt, ancient mills of, 294; 
durum wheat in tombs of, 294; 
wheat and civilization of, 279. 
Einkorn, and its prototype dis- 
tinct from other wheats, 296- 
297; classification of, 292; de- 
crease of cultivation of, 295; 
not the progenitor of common 
wheats, 297. 
Electric power, used to drive 
flour mills, 134. 

Electricity, in use on farms, 139. 

Elevator companies, borrow 
money from banks, 131 ; buy 
and sell wheat, 133. 

Elevators, and the Canada Grain 
Act, 68; choice of terminal 
102; compared with flat ware 
houses, 55; country, 56-57 
country, cost of building, 131 
hospital, 54; kinds of, 54-55 
number of, 54; principle of, 
53-54; terminal, 60-64. 

Elliott, G. F. Scott, on the first 
harvest, 285. 

Elymus, time of pollination of, 
305. 

Emmer, classification of, 292; de- 
crease in cultivation of, 295; 
found in Egyptian tombs and 
in lake dwellings, 298; not 
grown in Syria and Palestine, 
289; the only possible proto- 
type of true wheat, 298-299; 
milled in ancient Egypt, 294; 
wild species of, 286. 

England, and Yellow Stripe Eust 
disease, 178-179. 

Ensilage, corn used for, 189. 

Epidemic and epiphytotic dis- 
eases, 177. 

Essen, George, upon the origin of 
Red Fife wheat, 207-209, 210, 
212, 213. 

Europe, and grain exchanges, 



118; receives Marquis wheat, 

158. 
Evans, Sandford, on east-bound 

movement of wheat, 50. 
Evolution, of man connected with 

wheat, 306; of wheat, 294-296. 
Exhibitions, agricultural, and 

Marquis wheat, 171, 173-174. 
Experimental farms, and W. 

Saunders, 144; three, in the 

Red River Settlement, 24-26; 

various wheats tested at, 146- 

147 ; wheats crossed at, 148. 
Experimental Farms Reports, 

145, 147, 148, 149, 152, 181, 

183, 184, 186, 198, 201, 205, 

225, 242. 
Exporters of wheat, deprived of 

business, 120, 126. 
Export of wheat, financing of, 

132; from Manitoba in 1876, 

216; wheat sorts undesirable 

for, 149. 



Fallow land, in western Canada 
and the United States, 252- 
253; summer, principle of, 44. 

Fanning mill, how driven, 139. 

Fargo, Marquis wheat tested at, 
159. 

Farm, of Seager Wheeler, 272- 
273. 

Farmers, agrarian movement of, 
141-153; and origin of Mar- 
quis wheat, 230; benefits to, 
from Marquis, 255-251; can 
supervise weighing, 99; com- 
plaints of, 68-69; need of 
money by, 130; own elevators, 
142; private scales of, 99-100; 
receive grain prices from Win- 
nipeg, 105; represented on 
Board of Grain Commission- 



INDEX 



315 



ers, 127; terminal elevators of 
trading companies of, 102; 
tested Hard Red Calcutta 
wheat, 205. 

Farming, implements of, im- 
provements in, 138; mixed, in- 
troduction of, 43; use of straw 
in, 47. 

Farm life, recent improvements 
in conditions of, 138-141. 

Farms, and flying machines, 140- 
141; area under cultivation in 
1849, 27; chess matches at, 
140; first, in Red River Settle- 
ment, 9-10; lighting plant for, 
139; music on, 140; position 
of, in 1870, 30; sanitation of, 
139 ; telephones of, 140. 

Farrer, William, wheat-breeding 
work of, in Australia, 259-260. 

Federation wheat, in Australia, 
value of, 259. 

Fermenting cupboard, for bread- 
making, 103, 203. 

Fertilization of wheat eggs, 218- 
220. 

Fertilizers on farms, 43. 

Festuca, time of pollination of, 
305. 

Fife, David, and Red Fife wheat, 
206-207, 209, 210-212, 213, 
214, 215. 

Fife wheat, a name for Red Fife, 
207; percentage of in crops, 
167-169; replacement by Mar- 
quis in Minnesota, 246-248; 
yield of, in the United States, 
193-196. 

Financial business of forwarding 
crops divided, 132. 

Financing grain sales, and grain 
exchanges, 119; by Wheat 
Export Company, 120-121. 

Financing the crop movement, 
130-134. 



Finch, V. C, and 0. E. Baker, on 
geography of wheat, 37, 39, 
164. 

Finlayson, Governor, 23. 

Firbank wheat, in Australia, 259. 

Fire, diminution in risk of, on 
farms, 139. 

Fisher's Landing, and Red Fife 
wheat, 30, 216. 

Fishes, hunger prices for, in 
1821, 14. 

Fishing tackle, required in Red 
River Settlement, 28. 

Flail, used in Red River Settle- 
ment, 16. 

Flat warehouses, description of, 
55. 

Flax, crop in 1915, 36; questions 
respecting grading of, 104. 

Flood, in Red River Settlement, 
in 1825, 18-19; effect on crops, 
20; refuge during, in 1852, 24. 

Florence wheat, in Australia, 
259. 

Flour, amount of bran in, 23; 
Canadian, 200-201; export of, 
135-136; fall in price of, 21; 
of Red Fife and Galician 
wheats, 209; price of, at Red 
River in 1814, 17; price of 
Vermilion, 181; purchased in 
the United States, 28-29; Red 
River, evil nature of, 21-24. 

Flour mill, at Vermilion, 181; 
description of a modern, 137- 
138. 

Flour mills, of Minneapolis and 
Marquis wheat, 159; of west- 
ern Canada, 134-138. 

Flower of a wheat-plant, fertil- 
ization of the ovules, 219-220, 
222; opening and pollination 
of, 300-304. 

Flying machines, and farms, 140. 

Food Control Bill, 126. 



316 



INDEX 



Fort Abercrombie, and transport 
of flour, 29. 

Fort Simpson, Ladoga wheat 
grown at, 181. 

Fort Vermilion, amount of wheat 
grown at, 183; Ladoga wheat 
grown at, 181. 

Fort William, and east-bound 
wheat traffic, 49-50; and 
futures in wheat, 133; and 
loading platforms, 54; arrival 
at, of wheat from Fort Ver- 
milion, 183; clearance of wheat 
cargoes, 66-67; farmers' ele- 
vators at, 142; financing of 
crops to and from, 132; fixed 
prices of wheat at, 128-129; 
flour mills at, 134, 135; geo- 
graphical position of, 108-109; 
grain doors removed at, 59; 
inspection of grain at, 78; offi- 
cial weighing at, 100; over- 
filled cars sent to, 87 ; price of 
wheat in store at, 93; sample 
room at, 69-70; terminal ele- 
vators at, description of, 60- 
65; trains leaving Winnipeg 
for, 84; weighing and dockage, 
82; wheat bought stored at, 
112-113, 

Fortyfold wheat, and Marquis, 
165. 

France, and Marquis wheat, 112- 
113, 228; purchase of wheat 
for, 124. 

Fraser, J. D., inspector of wheat, 
77. 

Fraser wheat, and parentage of 
Prelude, 186. 

Free Press corn, ripening of, 190. 

Frost, and early-ripening wheats, 
155, 175-176; and wheat-breed- 
ing in Canada, 146; danger of, 
in early fall to wheat, 43, 48; 
dates of, in autumn, 180; 



frosted wheat kernels, 71; kills 
Turkey wheat, 166. 

Fruits, improvement of, 145. 

Fur trade, and the Selkirk Settle- 
ment, 5; through the Hudson 
Bay, 51. 

Future, the, of Marquis wheat, 
223-228. 

Future trading, developed by 
grain exchanges, 118; benefits 
of, 133. 

Future trading in wheat, ex- 
planation of, 109-110; facili- 
ties for, taken away at Winni- 
peg, 122 ; prohibited in the 
United States, 126. 

Futures, and the work of elevator 
companies, 133. 



G. 



Gage, J. C, on a crisis at the 
Winnipeg Grain Exchange, 
122-125; on effect of war on 
the grain trade, 120. 

Galicia, and origin of Red Fife 
wheat, 209. 

Galician wheat, resembles Red 
Fife, 208-210. 

Gallipoli Peninsula, dysentery at, 
27. 

Gambling on wheat, investiga- 
tion of, 121, 125. 

Garlach, Paul, wins a prize for 
wheat, 173. 

Gasolene engine, on the farm, 
138-139. 

Gehun wheat, and parentage of 
Ruby and Prelude, 186. 

Genealogical trees of Marquis, 
Ruby, and Prelude wheats, 185. 

Genesee, Marquis wheat at, 165. 

Genoa wheat, in Australia, 259. 

Geographical position of the 



INDEX 



317 



Winnipeg Grain Exchange, 
108-109. 

Geography of the World's Agri- 
culture, 163-164. 

Ghurka wheat, a parent of Little 
Joss, 179. 

Glasgow wheat, 207, 215; and 
Eed Fife, 207-211, 213. 

Glumes, opening of, in flower of 
wheat, 301 ; vary in color in 
wild wheat, 289. 

Gluten, elasticity of, from Mar- 
quis wheat, 155-156; in wheat 
flour, 199; quality of, 201-203. 

Glyndon Fife wheat, compared 
with Marquis, 166, 170-171. 

Goddess of agriculture, 280-283. 

Godfrey, Mr., of the Andrews 
Grain Company, 160. 

Godron, on time of opening of 
wheat flowers, 302. 

Golden Drop wheat, replaced by 
Red Fife, 218, 227. 

Gooseberries, improved by W. 
Sanders, 145. 

Governing bodies and scientific 
research, 238-239. 

Government of Canada, aid to 
farmers' elevator companies, 
142; great success of its wheat- 
breeding experiments, 256; and 
the crop movement, 133; and 
the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, 
125; appoints Board of Grain 
Commissioners, 127; com- 
mandeers wheat, 119; interior 
elevators of, 64; supervision 
by, at terminal elevators, 101- 
102; takes control of grain 
business, 129; terminal ele- 
vators of, 102. 

Grade, certificate of, 90. 

Graders, and their work, 82, 87, 
89-90. 

Grades of wheat, alteration in, 



97-98; general description of, 
70-75; line, and reinspection, 
97-98; mixing of, stopped in 
United States, 126; statistics 
of, for certain years, 92 ; stored 
separately at terminal ele- 
vators, 63. 

Grading of wheat, description of, 
75-93; favorable for Marquis, 
196-197; importance of, 92- 
93; origin of, 69; out of ter- 
minal elevators, 95-96; regu- 
lations favor red wheats, 261 ; 
scientific investigations upon, 
103; standard samples for, 87. 

Grain doors, 58-59. 

Grain exchanges, development 
and advantages of, 118-119. 

Grain Growers Export Company, 
business of, 143. 

Grain Growers Grain Company, 
142. 

Oram Growers Guide, and Cana- 
dian wheat history, 208, 211; 
and Red Bobs wheat, 269; ori- 
gin of, 142; yield of Marquis 
wheat, 191-192. 

Grain Research Laboratory, the 
Dominion, description of, 102- 
104; and Panama Canal, 52-53. 

Grain Standards Board, the 
western, and commercial wheat 
grades, 104. 

Grain wagon, use of, 56. 

Gramineae, and cross-pollination, 
300, 304-306. 

Grand Forks, and Marquis wheat, 
159, 161. 

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, 
and the wheat funnel, 49; ter- 
minal elevator of, 102. 

Grangeville, Marquis wheat at, 
165. 

Grapes, selected by W. Saunders, 
145. 



318i 



INDEX 



Grass family and . cross-pollina- 
tion, 300, 304-306. 

Grasshoppers, and locusts, 11; 
plagues of, 10, 28. 

Great Northern Railway, and J. 
J. Hill's wheat prize, 172. 

Greece, and Marquis wheat, 228 j 
ancient, and wheat, 279. 

Greeks, and the origin of wheat, 
280. 

Grinding grain, engine for, 139. 

Grindstones, how driven, 139; 
teeth used as, 157. 

Gunn, Donald, on rival fur com- 
panies, 5. 

Gynerium a/rgenteum, time of 
pollination of, 305. 



Hackel, and wheat classification, 
292-293; on lodicules of grass 
flowers, 304. 

Haifa, experiment station at, 
286. 

Hail, danger of, 48, 49, 176; de- 
stroys Seager Wheeler's crops, 
268-269 ; insurance against, 
48; resistance of wheats to, 
276. 

Hailstones, as large as hens' 
eggs, 48. 

Half-breeds, in the Selkirk Set- 
tlement, 6, 7, 18. 

Halifax, export of wheat from, 
50-51. 

Halkett, and the Selkirk Settle- 
ment, 15. 

Hallet, and selections of wheat, 
224; stimulates Haynes, 225. 

Hanna, W. J., on consumption of 
wheat in Canada, 255. 

Hanson and Barson, and Marquis 
wheat, 161. 



Hard and soft wheats, color of, 
261-262; mixed by British 
millers, 200. 

Hard Red Calcutta wheat, and 
parentage of Marquis, 151, 186, 
218-223; origin of, 204-206. 

Hargrave, J. J., on grasshopper 
plague, 28-29; on the Red 
River Settlement in 1870, 29- 
30. 

Harrison, T. J., grew wild wheat 
at Winnipeg, 291. 

Harrowing of crops, 46. 

Harrows, number of, in 1849, 27. 

Hartney, James, his Red Fife 
wheat, 217. 

Harvesters, visit western Canada 
annually, 47. 

Harvesting wheat, and shelling, 
197; with a brittle rachis, 
294; description of, in western 
Canada, 

Harvey, George, and White Bobs 
wheat, 270. 

Harvey Milling Company, and 
Marquis wheat, 160. 

Haussknecht, on wild einkorn, 
296. 

Hayes, H. K., and rust-resistance, 
179; on natural crosses in 
wheat, 266-267; supplies in- 
formation on Haynes' Blue- 
stem wheat, 225. 

Haynes, and his Bluestem wheat, 
224. 

Haynes' Bluestem wheat, com- 
pared with Marquis, 166, 170, 
171. 

Heating of wheat grains, 71. 

Hedged grain, not up to contract 
grades, 121. 

Hedging of grain, explanation 
of, 110, 133. 

Helm, H. S., on Marquis wheat, 
159. 



INDEX 



319 



Henderson, and Red Fife wheat, 

214. 
Hendrmn, and Minnesota No. 23 

corn, 188. 
Hewitt, Gordon, on grasshoppers, 

11- 

Hill, James J., wheat prize of- 
fered by, 172. 

Himalaya Mountains, wheat 
brought from, 146. 

Hoe, used for wheat culture, 2, 
4, 8, 16. 

Holcus, time of pollination of, 
305. 

Holmes, wins a prize for wheat, 
173. 

Hoover, Herbert, appointed food 
controller, 126; regulates 
wheat export, 129. 

Hordeum jubatum, its brittle 
rachis, 294. 

Horses, death of, 18; improve- 
ment of breed of, 25; number 
in 1849, 27. 

Hospital elevator, definition of, 
54. 

Hour-glass, the, in the Eed River 
Settlement, 14-15. 

Houses, number of, in Red River 
Settlement in 1849, 27. 

Houston county, corn grown in, 
189. 

Howard, A., G. L. C. Howard and 
Rahman Abdur, on natural 
crossing of wheat in India, 
301. 

Hudson Bay, and elevators, 64; 
use of, 51. 

Hudson Bay railway, 51-52. 

Hudson's Bay Company, at Fort 
Douglas, 8; change of route 
of, 29, 51; gives a prize for 
wheat, 217; grant of, to Lord 
Selkirk, 1, 3 ; its roller mill at 
Vermilion, 181-182; market 



of, 30; purchase of flour, 21; 
rival of the North-West Com- 
pany, 5; windmill of, 17. 

HuUess barley, crossbred by 
C. E. Saunders, 240; evolution 
of, 295. 

Hulless oats, evolution of, 295. 

Huron wheat, origin of, 149. 



I. 



Ice, and close of navigation, 63; 
thickness in Red River, 19. 

Idaho, Marquis wheat in, 164, 
165. 

Illinois, and the corn-belt, 187; 
Marquis wheat in, 164. 

India, source of Hard Red Cal- 
cutta and Gehun wheats, 186; 
wheat exported in bags, 52; 
wheat in war-time of, 123; 
wheat varieties from, 146. 

Indiana, and the corn-belt, 187; 
Marquis wheat in, 164. 

Indian corn, in census of 1822, 
16. Vide corn. 

Indian Head, and Angus Mac- 
Kay, 147; and the agrarian 
movement, 141; aboretum at, 
140; Marquis wheat at, 157; 
Marquis procured from, 159; 
Ruby and Red Bobs wheat 
tested at, 185; tests for Bobs 
wheat at, 260, 262; tests of 
Marquis at, 174-175; wheats 
crossed at, 148, 152; yield of 
Marquis at, 191, 196. 

Indians, nickname colonists, 2; 
suffer from the Bloody Flux, 
26. 

Influenza, compared with the 
Bloody Flux, 26, 27. 

Inland Empire, and Marquis 
wheat, 165. 



320 



INDEX 



Inland Revenue Department, and 
weighing grain, 99. 

Inspection Divisions, for grain, 
76. 

Inspection of grain, by United 
States Government, 126; why- 
concentrated at Winnipeg, 78. 

Inspection of wheat, at terminal 
elevators, 93-96; charge for, 
90; chief object of, 93; general 
description of, 75-93; space 
left above cars for, 58. 

Inspector, the Chief, 77, 78, 95, 
96. 

Inspectors, Deputy, 77; difficul- 
ties of, 75-76; of scales, 
99. 

Interior terminal elevators, 64. 

International Dry-Farming Con- 
gress, 173. 

International Soils Products Ex- 
position, 173-174. 

Iowa, and the corn-belt, 187; 
Marquis wheat in, 164; yield 
of Marquis in, 192. 

Irvine, J. T., information on 
wheat supplied by, 231, 243. 

Italy, and Marquis wheat, 228. 



J. 



Jack River, as a refuge for the 

Selkirk settlers, 5, 7, 8. 
James, C. C, on Canadian wheat 

history, 208, 211, 216. 
Japan, wheat varieties from, 146. 
Jennison Company, W. J., and 

Marquis wheat, 161. 
Jewish Agricultural Experiment 

Station, 286. 
Jonathan wheat, in Australia, 

259. 
Jones Winter Fife and Marquis 

wheats, 165. 



K. 

Kamloops district. Marquis 
wheat in, 157. 

Kanred wheat, at Seager Wheel- 
er's farm, 273. 

Kansas City, and Marquis wheat, 
174; and Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, 105. 

Kaufman, E. E., on California 
fruit, 231. 

Keewatin, flour mills at, 134, 
135, 136-138. 

Kenora, Couch-grass and Slender 
Wheat-grass at, 290; flour 
mills at, 134-135. 

Kerner von Marilaun, on pollina- 
tion of grasses, 304-306. 

Kerosene engine, use of, on 
farms, 138-139. 

Kharkov wheat, grown in Al- 
berta, 42. 

Kherson, and wheat-growing, 
182. 

Kincardine parish, home of 
David Fife, 207. 

Kingston, and Red Fife wheat, 
212. 

Kirchner, on pollination of wheat 
flowers, 302. 

Kitchener wheat, a mutation, 
226; and hail, 276; earliness 
of, 270; its origin, 226, 275- 
277; prize won with, 173. 

Kitto, F. H., on the Peace River 
district, 183. 

Kittson county, corn grown in, 
189. 

Koeleria, time of pollination of, 
305. 

Kornike, on opening of wheat 
flowers, 301-302; on origin of 
wheat, 285-286; on wheat 
classification, 292-293. 

Kotschy, and wild wheat, 286. 



INDEX 



321 



Kowalewski, observations on 
wheat and oats by, 182. 

L. 

Labor organizations, represented 
on Board of Grain Commis- 
sioners, 127. 
Ladd, E. F., milling and baking 
experiments of, 203. 

Ladoga wheat, in the Peace River 
Valley, 181, 183; introduced 
and tested by W. Saunders, 
146-147; parent of Preston, 
Stanley, Huron and Percy, 
149; replaced by Red Fife, 
227. 

Laidlaw, managed an experimen- 
tal farm, 25. 

Lake dwellings, emmer found in, 
298. 

Lake of the Woods, and flour 
mills, 134; two wild grasses 
at, 290. 

Lake of the Woods Milling Com- 
pany, 135; its quern and roller 
mill described and contrasted, 
136-138. 

Lake Shippers' Clearance Asso- 
ciation, work of, 66-68. 

Lake steamers, description of, 
65-66. 

Lake Winnipeg, and the Selkirk 
settlers, 7. 

Lamont, Samuel, first mill- 
wright at Red River, 17. 

Lamps and lanterns, falling into 
disuse of, 139. 

Larcombe, Samuel, wins a prize 
for wheat, 174. 

Lawrence, Sheridan, and wheat- 
growing in far north, 183. 

Le Couteur, and selections of 
wheat, 224. 



Leighty, C. E., on crosses be- 
tween wheat and rye, 266. 

Lewiston, Marquis wheat at, 
165. 

Liberty oat, C. E. Saunders 
selects, 240. 

Light, and wheat-growing, 182. 

Lighting plants, on farms, 139. 

Little Club wheat, and Marquis, 
165. 

Little Joss wheat, and cross- 
breeding, 2526; rust-resistant 
in England, 179. 

Liverpool, and Winnipeg Grain 
Exchange, 105, 116. 

Loading platform, and Canada 
Grain Act, 68; description of, 
54-55. 

Loading wheat, speed of, at the 
Ifkke front, 64. 

Loaves of bread, and Canadian 
flour, 200; from rusted wheat, 
103. 

Lodicules, function of, 303-304. 

Logan, his wind-mill, 24. 

London, and Panama Canal, 53, 
103; and Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, 105. 

Luther, Martin, phrase used by, 
61. 

M. 

Machinery, supplied by farmers' 
trading companies, 141-143. 

Macdonell, Alexander, on grass- 
hoppers, 10. 

Macoun, John, on Selkirk set- 
tlers, 7. 

Macoun, J. M., report on wheat 
grown in far north, 181. 

Macoun, W. T., and parentage 
of Ruby wheat, 186; on work 
of W. Saunders, 145; wheat 
crosses made by, 148; work on 
apples of, 145. 



322 



INDEX 



Macdonell, Miles, leads Selkirk 
settlers, 1 ; on harvest of 1813, 
2; surrenders himself, 5. 

MacDougal, John, quern of, 16. 

MacKay, Angus, and MacKay 
pea, 240-241; and Marquis 
wheat, 159; procures Ladoga 
wheat, 147. 

MacKay pea, named by W. 
Saunders, 240-241. 

Mackensie, Donald, describes Red 
River colony in 1820, 20-21. 

Mackensie River, and wheat, 181. 

Magill, Robert, advocated estab- 
lishment of Grain Research 
Laboratory, 102; on the grad- 
ing and inspection of grain, 
55, 64, 68, 76, 78, 79-82, 95- 
96, 102. 

Manchurian barley, originated 
by C. E. Saunders, 239. 

Mandscheuri barley, importation 
of, 239. 

Manitoba, and a prize for wheat, 
174; and the agrarian move- 
ment, 141 ; and the Survey 
Board, 97; boundary of, 3; 
corn grown in, 189-190; Hud- 
son Bay railway in, 51-52; 
first export of wheat from, 
216; flour mills of, 134; forma- 
tion of the Province of, 32; 
Marquis wheat introduced into, 
157; obtains Red Fife seed- 
wheat from Minnesota, 217- 
218; shelling of wheat in, 
197; tests for Marquis wheat 
in, 175; wheats crossed in, 
148; yield of Marquis in, 190, 
196. 

Manitoba Daily Free Press, on 
Red Fife wheat, 210, 227; on 
spring wheat in Ontario, 215. 

Manitoba Grain Growers Asso- 
ciation, organization of, 141. 



Mannichtousan, king of Sis, obe- 
lisk to, 279. 

Manure, use of, 43, 44. 

Maple Leaf Milling Company 
Limited, 135. 

Maritime Provinces and Marquis 
wheat, 157. 

Marketing grain, by sample, 69- 
70. 

Marquis wheat, and Bobs, 260; 
and Burbank's Quality wheat, 
233-237; and frost, 180-181; 
and hail, 276; and Hard Red 
Calcutta, 204-206; and its 
parent Red Fife, 218; and 
rust, 176-180; and the north- 
ward advance of the wheat- 
belt, 188; and the War, 228; 
as the offspring of Red Fife 
and Hard Red Calcutta, 218- 
223; beneficial influence of, 
154; classiflcation of, 292; 
comparative yields of, in 
Canada and the United States, 
196; compared with Minnesota 
standard wheat varieties, 
(Figs. 29, 30, 31), 166, 170, 
171; compared with Ruby and 
Prelude, 183-184; crop values 
in Canada and the United 
States, 243-246; discovery and 
introduction of, 144-257; dis- 
covery of, not accidental, 238 
does not shell readily, 197 
earliness and storms, 176 
earliness and yield of, 174- 
175; economic value of, 230- 
233; extraordinary example of 
vegetable increase, 170; favor- 
able grading of, 196-197; first 
distribution of, 157; first 
grinding of, 156; future of, 
223-228; genealogical tree of, 
185; general description of, 
170-172; history of, not well 



INDEX 



323 



known, 144; improvement of, 
224; increased wealth brought 
by, to Canada and United 
States, 246-252; in the United 
States, 158-170; introduction 
of into western Canada, 157; 
investigation of qualities of, 
154-157; its blessings to the 
world, 158; Kitchener the 
product of, 275; milling and 
baking qualities of, 198-204; 
natural crossing with Blue- 
stem, 266-267 ; origin of, little 
known to farmers, 230; origin 
of name of, 154; percentage of 
crop of, 167-169; possible 
origin from wild wheat of 
Palestine, 291; prizes awarded 
to, 172-174; provision for, in 
grades of wheat, 72; selection 
of by C. E. Saunders, 151-154; 
sown on 20,000,000 acres, 170; 
summary concerning, 257- 

, 258; value to North America 
and the world of, 257-258; 
why sought in British markets, 
200; yield of, in Canada, 190- 
192; yield of, in United States, 
192-196. 

Martin, Chester, on the history 
of the Selkirk settlers, 1-2, 6, 
7, 9, 13, 21, 29. 

May and Company, L. L., and 
Marquis wheat, 161. 

May wheat, a deal in, 111-113; 
highest price of, 121. 

McAlister, J. E., quern of, 16. 

McDonell, Alexander, the " grass- 
hopper governor," his revels, 15. 

McGill and Company, and Mar- 
quis wheat, 161. 

McLauchlin and Moore, test La- 
doga flour, 147. 

McLeod, John, defends Red River 
Settlement, 5-6. 



McMurray, J. L., wheat crosses 

made by, 148. 
Medicine Hat, cars inspected at, 
91; flour mills and natural 
gas, 134, 135. 
Mediterranean, civilization of, 

and wheat, 306. 
Melica, time of pollination of, 

305. 
Mendel, Gregor, and rust-resist- 
ance, 179; laws of inheritance 
of, 229. 
Mennonites, settle on open 

prairie, 30. 
Mensury barley, C. E. Saunders' 

selection from, 239. 
Mentor, and Minnesota No. 23 

corn, 188. 
Mice, in granaries, 23; plague 

of, in 1825, 18. 
Michigan, and Northwestern 

Dent corn, 190. 
Milking machines on farms, 138. 
Mill, experimental, of C. E. 
Saunders, 156, 203; of Hud- 
son's Bay Company at Fort 
Vermilion, 181-182; of Sheri- 
dan Lawrence at Fort Ver- 
milion, 183; one destroyed in 
1815, 5. 
Mill elevator, definition of, 

54. 
Miller, foreign, 132; British, 

mixes flour, 200. 
Millers, at Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, 106; competitive buy- 
ing of, during war, 124; deal 
in futures, 109-110. 
Milling, and mixed wheat, 162. 
Milling and baking qualities, of 
Ladoga wheat, 147 ; of Mar- 
quis, 155-157, 198-204; of 
Preston, Stanley, Huron, and 
Percy, 149; of Quality, 234; of 
Red Fife, 218; made by C. E. 



324 



INDEX 



Saunders, 156; supreme test of 
wheat, 147. 

Milling industry, effect of revolu- 
tion in, 30-31. 

Milling operations, early history 
of, in Red River Settlement, 
16-18. 

Mills, and Board of Grain Super- 
visors, 129; and grain ex- 
changes, 118; Egyptian, for 
emmer wheat, 294; experimen- 
tal, 103; Midget, 135; Min- 
neapolis, 159; querns, 16-17, 
136-137. 

Milner, W. E., on effect of war 
on grain trade, 119-120; on 
number of cars of wheat pass- 
ing through Winnipeg, 49; on 
wheat crop of 1915, 35-36, 
254; on Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, 105. 

Minneapolis, and introduction of 
Marquis wheat, 160; and Win- 
nipeg Grain Exchange, 105, 
116; and Velvet Chaff wheat, 
149; flour mills at, and Mar- 
quis wheat, 159; grading sys- 
tem at, 69; highest price for 
wheat at, 125 ; seed Marquis 
made available at, 164-165. 

Minnesota, and earliness of 
wheats, 176; and Minnesota 
No. 23 com, 188; and St. Paul 
railway, 32; and yields of 
several wheat varieties, 193- 
196; as source of Red Fife 
wheat for seed in Manitoba, 
217-218; chief wheat varieties 
of, and total crop, 167; corn 
culture in, 187-190; crop 
value of Marquis wheat in, 
244-245; financial benefit to, 
from Marquis, 247-249; in- 
troduction of Marquis into, 
158-165; Marquis in, 157; 



Preston wheat in, 149; purifier 
introduced into, 30-31. 

Minnesota Agricultural Experi- 
ment Station, and Marquis 
wheat, 192, 203-204; and 
Bluestem, 225; and Preston, 
149. 

Minnesota No. 13 corn and No. 
23 corn, origin of, 187-188. 

Minnesota No. 188 wheat, name 
for Preston, 149. 

Minnesota River, and transport 
of seed wheat, 13. 

Minnesota University, and early- 
ripening corn varieties, 187- 
188, 190; and rust-resistance, 
179; and spring wheat, 162; 
Marquis wheat tested at, 165; 
natural crosses of wheat at, 
266. 

Mitchel, a millwright in the Sel- 
kirk Settlement, 24. 

Moisture, conservation of, in 
soil, 43, 44, 45-46; in wheat 
grains, 71, 198; in wheat sam- 
ples, how estimated, 89. 

Moisture-testers, the Brown- 
Duvel, 89; other, 103. 

Molinia, time of pollination of, 
305. 

Money, amount received in 
Prairie Provinces for grain, 
106; infiated currency, 124; 
provided by banks, 131-132; 
required by farmers, 130. 

Montana, and Northwestern Dent 
corn, 190; and yield of several 
wheat varieties in, 193-196; 
chief wheat varieties of, and 
total crop, 167; crop value of 
Marquis wheat in, 244-245; in- 
creased wealth from growing 
Marquis in, 249-252; intro- 
duction of Marquis into, 160; 
Marquis in, 164, 166. 



INDEX 



325 



Montreal, Ogilvie flour mill at, 

135; wheat traflfic through, 

49-50. 
Moosejaw, cars inspected at, 91; 

elevator, 64, 102; inspection of 

grain at, 78. 
Moscow, Marquis wheat at, 165. 
Mount Hermon, and wild wheat^ 

140. 
Mummy wheat, its vitality lost, 

280. 
Music, on farms, 140. 



N. 



Nardus, time of pollination of, 
305. 

Nebraska, and the corn-belt, 
187; introduction of Marquis 
wheat into, 160; Marquis in, 
164. 

Neolithic Period, and wheat, 
284-285, 298. 

New York, and Hudson Bay 
route, 51-52; export of wheat 
from, 50-51; farmers' export 
business from, 143. 

New York State, Marquis wheat 
in, 164. 

Nilsson-Ehle, H., and wheat se- 
lections, 224; on natural 
crosses in wheat, 266. 

Noble, C. S., and a great yield 
of Marquis wheat, 191. 

Norman County, and Minnesota 
No. 23 corn, 188. 

North, the, and belts of wheat 
and corn, 187-190; wheat in 
the far, 182, 184. 

North Dakota, and Haynes Blue- 
stem, 224; and shelling of 
wheat, 197; and yields of sev- 
eral wheat varieties, 193-196; 
chief wheat varieties and total 



crop, 167; corn culture in, 
187-189; crop value of Mar- 
quis in, 244-245; increased 
wealth from growing Marquis 
in, 249-252; introduction of 
Marquis into, 158-165; Mar- 
quis wheat in, 157. 

North Dakota Agricultural Col- 
lege, and H. L. Bolley, 161. 

North Dakota Agricultural Ex- 
periment Station, and E. F. 
Ladd, 203. 

Northrup Grain Company, and 
Marquis wheat, 159, 160. . 

North-West Company, amalga- 
mation with Hudson's Bay 
Company, 9; charges against 
Lord Selkirk, 9; Fort Douglas 
captured and lost by, 7-8; 
ruin Red River Settlement in 
1815, 5. 



Oatmeal, in reserve at Selkirk 
Settlement, 14. 

Oats, a sale of, in the wheat-pit, 
117; as an admixture of 
wheat, 88; evolution of, 294- 
295; new variety of, 240; ori- 
gin of, 285; wild, in Manitoba, 
brittle rachis of, 294; wild, 
time of pollination of, 305. 

Ogilvie Flour Mill Compainy 
Limited, 16, 135. 

O'Donoghue, C. H., on locusts 
and grasshoppers, 11. 

Ohio, and the corn-belt, 187; 
Marquis wheat in, 164. 

Onega wheat, and parentage of 
Ruby, 186. 

Ontario, and Golden Chaff wheat, 
224; and origin of Red Fife 
wheat, 207, 212, 214, 215; 



326 



INDEX 



cause of improved barley pro- 
duction in, 239; export of Red 
Fife to, in 1876, 30, 216; flour 
mill at Port Colborne, 135; 
Marquis wheat in, 157; west- 
ern flour mills of, 134-135. 

Ontario Agricultural College, 
improvement in barley at, and 
its economic importance, 239; 
tests for winter wheat at, 224- 
225. 

Oregon, and yield of Marquis 
wheat, 192. 

Osiris, and mythical origin of 
wheat, 280. 

Otonahee, and Red Fife wheat, 
206, 207, 210, 212. 

Ottawa, crossed wheats trans- 
ferred to, 148; Marquis wheat 
selected at, 151-152; Monthly 
Bulletin published at, 104. 

Ovid, on the rust disease, 283. 



P. 



Pacific North-West, Marquis 
wheat in, 165-166. 

Palseolithic Period, and agricul- 
ture, 284. 

Palestine, and wild wheat, 286- 
291. 

Palouse district, and Marquis 
wheat, 165. 

Panama Canal, and elevators, 
64; shipment of bulk wheat 
through, 52-53, 64, 103. 

Panicum milUaceum, time of 
pollination of, 305. 

Paris, and Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, 105. 

Passenger pigeons, in Manitoba, 
4-5. 

Peace River valley, and Ladoga 
wheat, 181; and Red Fife, 184. 



Peas, in census of 1822, 16; new 
sorts of, 240-241. 

Pembina, settlers go to, 11. 

Percy wheat, origin of, 149. 

Persia, and primitive wheats, 
296. 

Perrigault, inventor of the puri- 
fier, 31. 

Peterborough, and Red Fife 
wheat, 207, 212-213. 

Philadelphia, export of wheat 
from, 50-51. 

Phleum, time of pollination of, 
305. 

Phonograph, on farms, 140. 

Pigeons, Passenger, C. N. Bell 
on, 4-5; injury of crops by, 4. 

Pigs, number of, in 1849, 27. 

Piper, C. B., on financing the 
crop movement, 130; on geo- 
graphical position of the Win- 
nipeg Grain Exchange, 109; 
on lake steamers, 65-66; on 
prices of contract grades, 111- 
112; on relative transporta- 
tion costs, 66; on velocity of 
credit, 132. 

Plant-breeders, and origin of 
new wheats, 223-226 ; triumphs 
of, 228. 

Plant-breeding, much still to be 
done in Canada, 241. 

Pliny, and the rust disease, 
283. 

Plows, absence of in Selkirk Set- 
tlement, 2, 8; improvement of, 
138; number of, in 1849, 27; 
yields after plowing in 1824, 
16. 

Plowing, in western Canada, 43; 
tractor for, 139. 

Poa, time of pollination of, 305. 

Polish wheat, classification of, 
292. 

Pollination, and origin of Mar- 



INDEX 



32Y 



quis wheat, 219-220; in wild 

wheat, 300. 
Pompeii, and Ceres, 282-283. 

Population, Lord Selkirk's 
prophecy concerning, 9; of the 
Red River Settlement in 1822, 
16; in 1849, 27; in 1870, 
29-30; in village of Winnipeg, 
33. 
Port Arthur, and east-bound 
wheat traffic, 49-50; and fu- 
tures, 133; clearance of wheat 
cargoes at, 66-67; farmers' 
elevators at, 142; financing 
of crops to and from, 132; 
fixed prices of wheat at, 128- 
129; geographical position of, 
109-109; government elevator 
at, 102; grain doors removed 
at, 59; inspection of grain at, 
78; official weighing at, 100; 
overfilled cars sent to, 87; 
price of wheat in store at, 93; 
sample room at, 69-70; ter- 
minal elevators at, 60, 64; 
trains leaving Winnipeg for, 
84; wheat bought stored at, 
112-113. 

Port Colborne, mill at, 135. 

Port Hope, and origin of Red 
Fife wheat, 213. 

Portland, Maine, export of wheat 
from, 50-51. 

Portland, Oregon, export of 
wheat from, 52. 

Port Nelson, and export of wheat 
from western Canada, 51. 

Post, failed to find wild wheat 
in Palestine, 287. 

Potatoes, in census of 1822, 16; 
late-sown in 1822, 20 ; yield of, 
in 1813, 2-4. 

Poulard wheat, classification of, 
292. 

Prairie, breaking of, 42-44; free- 



dom from trees of, 48; har- 
vesting scene upon, 48-49. 
Prehistoric man, and agricul- 
ture, 278-279. 
Prelude wheat, and cross-breed- 
ing, 226; and northward ad- 
vance of the wheat-belt, 188; 
and Quality wheat, 236 ; genea- 
logical tree of, 185; general 
description of, 183-187; re- 
placed Marquis locally, 227. 
Preston wheat, admixtures in, 
in North Dakota, 162; and 
Marquis in the United States, 
164; and parentage of Red 
Bobs, 262, 263, 267-268; at 
Fort Vermilion, 183; compared 
with Marquis, 166, 170-171; 
grown at Rosthern, 274; in 
Minnesota, 163; in United 
States, 149; origin of, 149. 

Price of wheat, and grading of 
Marquis, 197; cause of high 
prices of, 124; fixation of, in 
Canada, 128-129; fixation of, 
in United States, 128; from 
which came Red Fife, 213; 
highest, at Chicago, 124; high- 
est, at Minneapolis, 125; high- 
est, at Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, 121; in wheat-pit at 
Winnipeg, 116; of Burbank's 
Quality seed, 234; of different 
grades, 93; of May wheat. 111; 
of Red Fife in 1876 at Winni- 
peg, 216; remarks on, 106- 
107. 

Primitive man, and domestica- 
tion of wheat, 306; and wild 
wheat, 288, 294-295. 

Prince Albert district, Ladoga 
wheat procured from, 147. 

Pringle, C. G., and wheat hy- 
brids, 226. 

Prizes for wheat, awarded to 



328 



INDEX 



Marquis, 172-174; awarded to 
White Bobs, 270; in 1882 at 
Winnipeg, 217; won by Seager 
Wheeler, 274-275, 276. 

Probe, for sampling grain cars, 
construction and use of, 84- 
85. 

Prosperity, of Red River Settle- 
ment in 1822, 20-21. 

Puccinia gramiwis, action of fun- 
gus on wheat, 176-180. 

Pullman, Marquis wheat at, 165. 

Pumping water, how accom- 
plished on farms, 138. 

Punjab, natural cross-pollination 
of wheat in, 301. 

Purifier for flour, and hard 
spring wheat in Manitoba, 
217; introduction into Minne- 
apolis of, 30-31. 



Quality, in wheat, 198-200. 
Quality wheat, Burbank's, and 

Marquis, 233-237. 
Quantity wheat, Burbank's, 234- 

235. 
Quebec, Province of. Marquis 

wheat in, 157. 
Quebec No. 28 corn, ripening of, 

190. 
Quern, brought by Doukabors, 

description of, 136-137; in 

Red River Settlement, 16-17. 



R. 



Rabbits and mice, periodic in- 
crease of, 18. 

Rachis of wheat heads, brittle in 
certain wheats, 293-295; rigid 
derived from brittle, 296. 

Railways, all-rail route for 



wheat, 63 ; and the wheat f im- 
nel, 49; and transportation by 
water, 66; conductor's train 
list, 83 ; grain trains at Winni- 
peg, 78; long haul of wheat 
on, 183; procession of grain 
trains on, 59; sampling grain 
on, 79-81; sealing cars of, 58; 
seals of, 83-84; size of box- 
cars, 58. 

Rain, danger of, to standing 
crops, 176; low rain-fall and 
fallowing, 44. 

Rasheyya, and wild wheat, 286- 
288. 

Raymond, and Marquis wheat, 
173. 

Recorder of Winnipeg Grain Ex- 
change, presides over wheat- 
pit, 118. 

Red Bobs wheat, and hail, 276; 
at University of Saskatchewan, 
270-271; description of, 272; 
future of, 227; origin of, 259- 
275 ; selection, multiplication, 
and distribution of, 268-270; 
shown at a show, 174; tests 
of, incomplete, 272; the prod- 
uct of a natural cross, 264- 
268. 

Red Chaff wheat, replaced by 
Red Fife, 227. 

Red Fife wheat, and a natural 
cross, 265-266; and Hard Red 
Calcutta, 205; and frost, 180; 
and Marquis, 257; and Mar- 
quis in the United States, 
164; and parentage of Mar- 
quis, 218-223; and shelling, 
197; and Rust disease, 178, 
180, 214; a parent of Marquis 
and Ruby, 186-187; at Fort 
Vermilion, 184; classification 
of, 292; compared with Mar- 
quis in plot tests, 174-175; 



INDEX 



329 



exported from Manitoba to 
Ontario in 1876, 216; famous 
during last century, 145-146; 
for seed in Manitoba, brought 
from Minnesota, 217; grinding 
of, 196-197; improvement of, 
224; in definition of grades, 
72-73 ; introduction into 
United States, 215; in western 
Canada, 42; milling and bak- 
ing qualities of, 198; name 
wrongly applied to Preston 
wheat, 149; origin of, 206- 
218; origin of name of, 206; 
outyielded by Marquis, 157; 
parent of Preston and Stanley, 
149; possible origin from wild 
wheat of Palestine, 291; price 
of, in 1843, 214; replaced by 
Marquis, 227, 253-254; the 
male parent of Marquis, 151; 
used in crossing experiments, 
148; yield and earliness of, 
compared with Marquis, 190, 
174-175; why sought in Brit- 
ish market, 200. 

Eed River, as a main highway, 
10; ice of, in 1825-26, 19. 

Red River carts, number and 
use of, 29. 

Red River Settlement, history of, 
1-33; and Hudson Bay, 51. 

Red Russian wheat, and Mar- 
quis, 165. 

Regina, Marquis seed-wheat for 
United States procured from, 
159; and Saskatchewan Grain 
Growers Association, 142; 
publication on rust disease at, 
178. 

Registration records, for wheat, 
101. 

Reinspection of wheat, 96-98. 

Re-selection of wheats, by C. E. 
Saunders, 153-154. 



Resistance to disease, by wheat, 
179-180, 226. 

Reubens, Marquis wheat at, 165. 

Richardson, A. E. V., on Far- 
rer's wheat-breeding work, 
259-260. 

Riel, Louis, insurrection of, 32, 

Riga wheat, at Fort Vermilion, 
183. 

Rimpau, and selections of wheat, 
224; on elongation of staminal 
filaments of wheat, 304; on 
lodicules of grass flowers, 304; 
on opening of wheat flowers, 
303. 

Rio Grande wheat, and a natural 
cross, 265-266. 

Ripening of wheat, and latitude, 
182, 184; comparative, of 
Marquis and Red Fife, 175. 

Robenhausen, emmer found in 
lake dwellings of, 298. 

Robertson, Colin, and return of 
settlers to Red River, 6. 

Robigus, the rust god, 283-284. 

Roblin, R. P., on corn grown in 
Manitoba, 189. 

Rocky Mountains, the, and Mar- 
quis wheat, 166, 192; and 
Quality wheat, 236. 

Rome, and Ceres, 282-283 ; wheat 
of, 279. 

Root-rot of wheat, and disease- 
resistance, 226. 

Roscher, W. H., on Ceres, 283. 

Rosh Pinar, wild wheat found 
at, 287-288. 

Ross, Alexander, on Bloody Flux, 
26; on census of 1849, 27; on 
grasshoppers, 10-12; on mice, 
18; on Red River flour, 21- 
24; on the hour-glass, 14-15; 
on yields of wheat, 20; pos- 
sible error in chronology of, 4. 

Rosthern, and origin of Red 



330 



INDEX 



Bobs, 259, 262; Preston wheat 
grown at, 274; seed fair at, 
270; yield of Marquis wheat 
at, 191. 

Rowley, H. C, on value of Cali- 
fornian fruit-growing indus- 
try, 231. 

Royal Flour Mills, test Ladoga 
wheat, 147. 

Ruby wheat, genealogical tree of, 
185; general account of, 183- 
187; may replace Prelude, 227. 

Russel, Miller Milling Company, 
and Marquis wheat, 159, 160. 

Russia, and wheat-growing in 
far north, 182; einkorn and 
emmer in, 295 ; Mennonites 
came from, 30; source of La- 
doga and Onega wheats, 186; 
wheat locked up in, 123 ; wheat 
sought from, for seed, 213; 
wheat varieties brought from, 
146. 

Rust disease, and disease-resist- 
ance, 226; and earliness in 
wheats, 155; and Red Fife 
wheat, 207, 211; and Siberian 
wheat, 213; and wheat grains, 
71; Black Stem, great losses 
due to, 180; danger of, in 
western Canada, 48 ; descrip- 
tion of, 176-180; in antiquity, 
283-284; resistance to, 178; 
Yellow Stripe, in England, 179. 

Rusted wheat grain, in 1916, 
103; special grade for, 74. 

Rye, crossed with wheat, 266; in 
1813, 4; origin of, 285; time 
of pollination of, 305. 



St. Boniface, and the St. Paul 
railway, 32. 



St. Cloud line, and com culture, 
189. 

St. John, export of wheat from, 
50-51. 

St. Lawrence River, and export 
of wheat, 50-51. 

St. Paul, and Red River carts, 
29; building of railway from, 
32; flour conveyed through, to 
succor Red River settlers, 28; 
corn obtained from, 187. 

St. Paul railway, the, building 
of, 32; export of wheat by, 
217. 

Sample bags, weight of contents 
of, 86. 

Sample market, the, 69-70, 96. 

Sampler or stabber, structure 
and use of, 84-86. 

Samplers, a gang of, 80. 

Samples of wheat, how taken at 
a terminal elevator, 94; how 
taken on a steamer, 96; how 
stored at Winnipeg, 82, 90; 
sale of, by Inspection Depart- 
ment, 91. 

Sampling grain, account of, 79- 
81. 

Sanitation on farms, improve- 
ment of, 139-140. 

Sarnia, and Red Fife wheat in 
1876, 216. 

Saskatchewan, acreage and yield 
of wheat in, 35, 36; and La- 
doga wheat, 147; and Marquis 
wheat prizes, 173; and Pre- 
lude wheat, 184; and tests for 
Marquis wheat, 174-175; and 
the agrarian movement, 141; 
and the Survey Board, 97; 
durum wheat in, 42; export of 
grain from, through Hudson 
Bay, 51; flour mills of, 134; 
Marquis wheat in, 144; Mar- 
quis wheat introduced into, 



INDEX 



331 



157; shelling of wheat in, 
197; traffic with Red Eiver in 
1870, 29; University of, and 
rust-resistance, 179; wheats 
crossed in, 148; yield of Mar- 
quis in, 190, 191, 196. 

Saskatchewan Cooperative Ele- 
vator Company, 128, 141-142, 

Saskatchewan Grain Growers 
Association, organization of, 
141. 

Saskatoon, and Dwarf Marquis 
wheat, 225; and wild wheat, 
291; number of cars inspected 
at, 91; elevator at, 64, 102; 
inspection of grain at, 78. 

Saunders, A. P., and parentage 
of Marquis and Prelude 
wheats, 186; assisted W. Saun- 
ders, 145; biographical note 
upon, 151 ; made cross from 
which sprang Marquis wheat, 
151 ; wheat crosses made by, 
148, 149. 

Saunders, C. E., and Burbank, 
228-233 ; and the chewing test 
for wheat, 155, 201-203; and 
the northward advance of the 
wheat-belt, 190; and the rust 
disease, 180; appointed Domin- 
ion cerealist, 150; assisted 
W. Saunders, 145; biographi- 
cal sketch of, 237-238; ex- 
traordinary value of his work, 
256-257; his Early Red Fife 
wheat, 225; his original esti- 
mate of Marquis wheat con- 
firmed, 158; his regard for the 
British market, 200; investi- 
gates qualities of Marquis, 
154-157; isolates Marquis, 
144; list of publications by, 
242; Marquis, Ruby, and Pre- 
lude wheats, 183-187; names 
Marquis, 154; obtains a wheat 



naturally crossed, 265-266; on 
Bobs wheat, 260; on quality in 
wheat, 198; on the cross re- 
sulting in Marquis, 152; on 
the geography of Marquis, 
164; on the origin of Red 
Fife wheat, 208-209; selects 
Marquis, 151-154; the first 
miller and baker of Marquis, 
201 ; wheat crosses made by, 
148; wide range of work as 
a cerealist, 200; work upon 
barley, oats, and peas, 239- 
242. 

Saunders, W., and crossing 
wheats, 226; and Ladoga 
wheat, 181, 186; and Marquis 
wheat, 151; and peas, 240; in- 
troduced Hard Red Calcutta, 
204; on effect of simlight on 
wheat, 182; summary of work 
of, 144-151. 

Scales, in country elevator 8> 99. 

Sclerochloa, time of pollination 
of, 305. 

Schliemann, on a cereal found at 
Troy, 297. 

Schools, and Marquis wheat, 
256; number of, in 1849, 27. 

Schweinfurth, and the wild 
wheat, 286, 289. 

Science, besom of, sweeps away 
superstitions, 284; pure, helps 
applied, 179. 

Scientific research, and govern- 
ing bodies, 238-239; and solu- 
tion of grain problems, 103; 
value of, illustrated by success 
of Marquis wheat, 256-258. 

Scotch Danzig wheat, name for 
Red Fife, 206, 208, 211. 

Scotch Fife wheat, replacement 
of, by Marquis, 227. 

Scotch wheat, name for Red 
Fife, 207. 



332 



INDEX 



Scotland, and Red Fife wheat, 
207-208. 

Screenings, at country elevators, 
56. 

Sealing railway cars, after in- 
spection, 81, 84; at country 
elevators, 58. 

Seals of railway cars, breaking 
of, 83; construction of, 83; 
record of, 100. 

Seattle, export of wheat from, 
52. 

Seed Fairs, Seager Wheeler at, 
275. 

Seed-testing laboratories, for 
wheat, 45. 

Seed wheat, highest prices for, 
234; of Marquis, first distribu- 
tion in western Canada, 157; 
of Marquis, Kitchener, and 
Red Bobs, supplied by Seager 
Wheeler, 275; of Red Bobs, 
supplied by Grain Growers 
Guide, 269; of Red Fife, 217- 
218; preparation and sowing 
of, 44-45. 

Selection, of new wheat varie- 
ties, 224-227. 

Self-fertilization, of wheat flow- 
ers, 222. 

Self-pollination, of wheat flow- 
ers, 301-303. 

Selkirk, Lord, and the Kildonan 
farms, 9-10; bears expense of 
seed wheat, 13; belief in ex- 
perimental farms justified, 26; 
care of colonists by, 14; cost of 
experimental farm to, 25; 
death of, in France, 9; encour- 
aged agriculture in 1815, 9; 
force sent by, 8; map showing 
his grant of land, 3; refers to 
a distillery, 18; remarkable 
prophecy of, 8-9; Semple's let- 
ter to, 7; sends a wind-mill to 



Red River Settlement, 24; 
sends out a mill-wright in 
1813, 17; sends settlers to 
Manitoba, 1 ; visits Red River 
Settlement in 1817, 8-9. 

Selkirk Settlement, foundation 
of, 1; state of, in 1870, 29-30; 
value of, in 1822, 16. 

Selkirk settlers, history of, 1- 
33; route of, in 1811-1815, 3. 

Semple, Robert, calculation by, 
of wheat stored at Settlement 
in 1815, 6; death of, in fight 
at Seven Oaks, 7. 

Serbes, cultivate einkorn and 
emmer, 296. 

Serls, George, as Chief Inspector 
of grain, 77; on percentage of 
Marquis in western Canadian 
wheat crop, 243, 253. 

Seven Oaks, fatal fight at, 7. 

Shaughnessy, Sir Thomas, wheat 
prize offered by, 172-173. 

Sheep, number of, in 1849, 27. 

Shelling, of Hard Red Calcutta, 
205 ; resistance to, by Marquis, 
197, 223. 

Shipley, J. W., on extraordinary 
size of hailstones, 48. 

Shipping, facilities for, and posi- 
tion of fiour mills, 134; of 
Marquis wheat across Atlantic, 
158; of wheat, by lake ship- 
pers, 66-68; of wheat, on 
Peace River, 183; shortage of, 
during war, 119. 

Shirreff, and selections of wheat, 
224. 

Shutt, F. T., sections of papers 
on wheat written by, 242. 

Siberian wheat, in Ontario, 213. 

Sickle, used by Selkirk settlers, 
16. 

Sieving, of grain, 82. 

Simpson, Governor, encourages 



INDEX 



333 



agriculture, 21 ; his experi- 
mental farm, 25. 

Smith, L. H., on natural hybrids 
of wheat, 266. 

Smith's Creek, and Ked Fife 
wheat, 213. 

Smut disease, and disease-resist- 
ance, 226 ; bunt-resisting 
wheat, 259 ; in threshed wheat, 
71; prevention of, 44-45; re- 
sistance to, 178. 

Smut-mills, absence of in Selkirk 
Settlement, 22. 

Social development, and agricul- 
ture, 278-279; the agrarian 
movement, 141-143. 

Soil, fertility of, in 1813-1814, 
2; preparation of, for crops, 
42-44. 

Solms-Laubach, the Count of, on 
the origin of wheat, 285. 

Sorghum, time of pollination of, 
305. 

South Dakota, and yields of sev- 
eral wheat varieties, 193-196; 
chief wheat varieties of, and 
total crop, 167; corn culture 
in, 187; crop value of Marquis 
wheat in, 244-245; increase in 
wealth in, from growing Mar- 
quis, 249-252; introduction of 
Marquis into, 158-165; Mar- 
quis in, 157 ; Preston wheat in, 
149. 

Soy-beans, at Rosthern, 273. 

Speculating in wheat, investiga- 
tion of, 121. 

Spelt, classification of, 292; de- 
crease in cultivation of, 297; 
no very ancient remains of, 
297. 

Spread between wheat prices, 
nature of, 93. 

Spring wheat and winter wheat, 
in Minnesota, 162; in Selkirk 



Settlement, 1; in western Can- 
ada, 42. 

Square Head's Master wheat, in 
England, 179. 

Stabber, for sampling grain, 
structure and use of, 84-85. 

Stakman, E. K., and rust-resist- 
ance, 179; on geography of 
Marquis wheat, 164. 

Stamens of wheat flowers, rapid 
growth of filaments of, 304, 

Standard's Board for grain, 74- 
75. 

Stanley wheat, origin of, 149. 

Steele, R. C, takes wheat in 
1876 from Manitoba to On- 
tario, 216. 

Stink-weed, introduction of, into 
western Canada, 13. 

Stocktaking of grain, at terminal 
elevators, 101-102. 

Stone Age, and agriculture, 278. 

Storage of wheat, in bulk, 93- 
94. 

Strabo, mentions rust disease, 
283. 

Straw, length of, for Marquis 
wheat, 223; of Kitchener 
wheat, 276; waste of, in west- 
ern Canada, 46-47. 

Strothers, and origin of Red Fife 
wheat, 206. 

Stuart, William, on Burbank's 
potato, 232-233. 

Stubble fields, wheat sown on, 43. 

Super wheat, Burbank's, 234- 
235. 

Supply and demand, law of, af- 
fects price of hard wheat, 200. 

Swabians, grow einkorn and em- 
mer, 295. 

Swiss emigrants, at Red River 
Settlement, 14, 19-20. 

Symes, inspector of wheat at 
lake front, 96. 



334 



INDEX 



Syria, flora of, does not include 
wild wheat, 287; wild wheat 
found in, 290. 



T. 



Telegrams, at Winnipeg Grain 
Exchange, 117; and geographi- 
cal position of Winnipeg, 108. 

Telegraphy, wireless, possible use 
of, 140. 

Telephone, and geographical po- 
sition of Winnipeg, 108; sum- 
moning of wheat traders to, 
117; use of, on farms, 140. 

Temperature, and opening of 
wheat flowers, 302-303, 306. 

Terminal elevators, clearance of 
cargoes from, 67; some con- 
trolled by farmers, 142; defini- 
tion of, 54; description of, 60- 
64; impression made on immi- 
grant by, 60-61 ; inspection at, 
93-96; weighing wheat at, 98- 
100. 

Test-plots, of C. E. Saunders at 
Ottawa (Figs. 23 and 24), 153, 
157; of John Bracken, 270. 

Theophrastus, mentions rust dis- 
ease, 283. 

The Pas, and the Hudson Bay 
Eailway, 51. 

Thew wheat, in Australia, 259. 

Threshing machines, engines for, 
139; improvement of, 138. 

Threshing of wheat, and Mar- 
quis, 197; in western Canada, 
46-47; on ice-floes in Selkirk 
Settlement, 22. 

Thompson, W. P., and Dwarf 
Marquis wheat, 225; and rust- 
resistance, 180; crossing ex- 
periments of, 267; his plot of 
wild wheat, 291. 



Times, the, letters concerning 

Red River Settlement in, 28. 
Toronto, and Red Fife wheat, 

212, 216; tests of Ladoga flour 

at, 147. 
Tough wheat, milling value of, 

104. 
Trabut, on crossing varieties of 

Anagallis, 297. 
Tractors, replacing horses on 

farms, 139. 
Traill, Maulson, and Clark, im- 
port Red Fife, 218. 
Trains, breaking up of, 94; pro- 
cession of grain trains, 59; 

view of trains of Canadian 

Pacific Railway (Fig. 10), 57. 
Transcona, elevator at, 64. 
Trees, planting of, on farms, 140. 
Trisetum, time of pollination of, 

305. 
Triticum, time of pollination 

of, 305; subdivisions of, 292, 

293. 
Triticum dicoccum, and wild 

wheat, 290 ; not grown in 

Syria and Palestine, 289. 
Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides, 

289-291. 
Triticum hermonis, conclusion 

concerning, 299 ; Cook's name 

for the wild wheat, 290-291. 
Triticum. mcnococcum, and wheat 

hybrids, 293; einkorn, 289. 
Triticum monococcum aegili- 

poide, found on Mount Her- 

mon, 289. 
Triticum polonicum, crossing of, 

296. 
Triticum vulgar e dicoccoides, 

286. 
Troy, barley found in ruins of, 

297. 
Tryptolemus, and the origin of 

wheat, 280. 



INDEX 



335 



Tullyallen, in Scotland, and 
David Fife, 207. 

Turkey Ked wheat, grown in Al- 
berta, 42; in Inland Empire, 
165; on Seager Wheeler's 
farm, 273. 

Turnips, in 1813 in Selkirk Set- 
tlement, 4. 



U. 



United Farmers of Alberta, the, 
organization of, 141. 

United Grain Growers Limited, 
organization of, 141-142. 

United Kingdom, purchase of 
wheat for, 124; rising wages 
in, 123. 

United States, the, and blessings 
of Marquis wheat, 158; and 
cross-pollination in wheat, 
301; and sample markets, 69; 
assists Red River Settlement, 
28; crop value of Marquis in, 
244-246; fixed prices of wheat 
in, 128; food controller of, 
126; increased wealth in, due 
to introduction of Marquis, 
246-252; introduction of Mar- 
quis into, 158-170; Marquis 
in, 153, 157; Marquis in 1914, 
160; Preston wheat in, 149; 
reference map of States of, 
163; revolution in milling in- 
dustry in, 30-31; route to Red 
River Settlement through, 51; 
seed wheat obtained from, in 
1820, 12-13; wheat export in 
1913, 39; wheat raised in, 40, 
41 ; wheat varieties from, test- 
ed, 146; wild wheat brought 
to, 291. 

United States Grain Corporation, 
action of, 126. 



University of Minnesota, vide 
Minnesota University. 

University of Saskatchewan, and 
Dwarf Marquis wheat, 225; 
and rust disease, 178, 179; 
crossing wheats at, 267 ; White 
Bobs grown at, 270-271; wild 
wheat grown at, 291. 

University of Toronto, and Mar- 
quis wheat, 237, 238. 

Universities and schools, cost of, 
and Marquis wheat, 256. 

Unger, and wheat found in a 
pyramid, 279. 

V. 

Vancouver, and the Panama 
Canal, 103; government eleva- 
tor at, 102; wheat exported 
from, 52. 

Varro, mentioned rust disease, 
283. 

Velocity of credit, principle of, 
and crop movements, 132. 

Velvet chaff wheat (Preston), 
and Marquis in the United 
States, 164; compared with 
Marquis (Figs. 29, 30, 31), 
166, 170, 171; percentage of 
crop of, 167-169; replacement 
by Marquis in Minnesota, 246- 
248; various names for, and 
origin, 149; yield of, in United 
States, 193-196. 

Vermilion, roller mill at, 181. 

Vermont, home of C. G. Pringle, 
226. 

Vienna, discovery in a herbarium 
at, 286. 

Vilmorin, on the crossing of 
wheats, 296. 

von Marilaun, Kerner, on polli- 
nation of grasses, 304-306. 

von Tschermak, wheat hybrids 
of, 296. 



336 



INDEX 



W. 



Wangen, emmer found in lake 
dwellings of, 298. 

War, the Great, and part played 
by Marquis wheat, 255 ; and 
price of wheat, 255 ; and the 
Grain Growers' Export Com- 
pany, 143; effect of peace on 
crop value of Marquis, 246; 
effect on grain trade of, 118- 
129; efforts to increase crops 
during, 40; export of flour 
during, 136; increase of Mar- 
quis during, 164, 

Warburg, and the wild wheat, 
286. 

Warehouse receipts, for grain, 
100-101. 

Warfare, delightful, with wheat 
and corn, 170. 

Warren wheat, in Australia, 
259. 

Washing machine, how driven, 
139. 

Washington, Bureau of Crop Es- 
timates at, quoted, 167; 
Monthly Crop Reports, 191, 
244, 245, 247, 249, 251. 

Washington States, and Marquis 
wheat, 160, 164, 165, 192. 

Water-mills, number of, in 1849. 

Water power, and milling, 134. 

Wealth increased by introduction 
of Marquis wheat, in Canada, 
252-257; in North America, 
257-258 ; in the United States, 
246-252. 

Weather, and yield of Marquis 
wheat, 196; during harvesting, 
48; very cold, in, 1825-1826, 
19. 

Weeds, chief kinds of, 44; choke 
grain in 1813, 5; harrowing to 
kill, 46; some introduced with 



seed wheat in 1820, 13; on 
stubble fields, 43. 

Weed seeds in wheat, how esti- 
mated, 88; kinds of, 70-71. 

Weighing of wheat, at country 
elevators, 56; general account 
of, 98-100; by graders at 
Winnipeg Grain Exchange, 
how accomplished, 82, 87-88. 

Weighmaster, the Chief, 100. 

Weight, of Ladoga wheat in far 
north, 181; of wheat in cer- 
tain grades, 72-73; of wheat 
per bushel, 175. 

Western Canada, crop statistics 
of, 35-40; effect of revolution 
in the milling industry upon, 
30-31; value of Marquis to, 
256. 

Western Canada Flour Mills 
Company Limited, 135. 

Western Inspection Division, for 
cereals, 54, 59, 92. 

Wheat, admixtures of, 70-71; 
and Hudson Bay railway, 51- 
52; and farmers' trading com- 
panies, 141-142; and food, 
227; and frost, 180-183; and 
rust disease, 175-180; and 
weather, 175-176; antiquity 
and origin of, 279-285, 298; as 
basis of Winnipeg's prosperity, 
33; at terminal elevators, 60- 
64; botanical classification of, 
292-293; bought and sold at 
Winnipeg Grain Exchange, 
111-118; bought and sold by 
elevator companies, 133; bush- 
els raised in various countries, 
40; cessation "of future trading 
in, 122; cleaned for seed, 44; 
color of kernels of, 260-262; 
commandeered in 1915, 119; 
conclusion concerning, 306 ; 
contract grades of, 111-112; 



INDEX 



337 



crop of, average in western 
Canada, 254; crop of, in 1821, 
14; crosses of, with rye, 266; 
cutting of (Fig. 5), 45; de- 
stroyed by hail, 48; east-bound 
movement of, 50; effect of ris- 
ing price of, 121-122; effect of 
war on, 118-129; estimating 
moisture in, 89; evolution of, 
from wild ancestors, 294-295; 
export of, in 1913, 39; export 
of, in 1915-1916, 40; famine 
price of, in 1826, 19; first ex- 
port of, from Manitoba, 30; 
flowing property of, 53, 57; 
futures, 109-110; future trad- 
ing in, prevented, 126; general 
importance of improvement in, 
230 ; gigantic monoply in, 126 ; 
grinding of, for Hudson's Bay 
Company, 23; harvesting of, 
in western Canada, 46, 47; 
heading out of, 46; heated, 71; 
highest prices at Chicago and 
Minneapolis, 124, 125; highest 
prices at the Winnipeg Grain 
Exchange, 121 ; high yield of 
and earliness of, antagonistic 
qualities, 185; hoeing of, 2; 
how shipped at lake front, 63; 
in box-cars, 57-59; in census 
of 1822, 16; in country eleva- 
tors, 56; in 1813, supposed 
high yield of, 4; in flat ware- 
houses, 55 ; in lake steamers, 
65-66; in sample markets, 69- 
70; in western Canada, 35- 
141; inspection of, 75-93; late- 
sown in 1822, 20; milling and 
baking properties of, 72; mix- 
ing of grades prevented, 126; 
moisture in, 71; natural 
crosses of, 265-267; new seed 
from the United States in 
1820, 12-13; not descended 



from einkom, 297; per capita 
production and use of, 39; pop- 
ulation of, in a field, mixed, 
224; price variations of, 106- 
107; prices of, at grain ex- 
changes, 116, 121, 124-125; 
prices fixed by Hudson's Bay 
Company, 22; prices of differ- 
ent grades, 93; quality of, 
198-100; rapid loading of into 
steamers, 61; regulation of 
price of, 125-129; removal 
from farms of, 47-48 ; research 
work on qualities of grain, 
103; sampling of, 79-81,' 84- 
87; setting dockage of, 88; 
silver watch exchanged for, 
14; smutted, 71; sown in 
1812 and 1813 at Red River 
Settlement, 1 ; sown with 
drills, 45; standard samples 
of, 87; successful harvest of, 
in 1815, 6; the Great Funnel, 
49-51; the hour-glass, 14-15; 
the wheat clock, 117-118; time 
of pollination of, 305; tough 
and damp, 104; variations pro- 
duced by crossing, 150; want 
of uniformity in, 162; winter, 
in western Canada, 41-42; 
yield per acre in various coun- 
tries, 38. 

Wheat-breeders, and the chewing 
test, 202. 

Wheat-breeding, attitude of Sea- 
ger Wheeler towards, 273; 
success of, in Canada, 256; 
work of W. Saunders upon, 
144-151. 

Wheat Export Company, activity 
of, in 1916-1917, 120-122; 
origin of the, 120; president of 
the, 128. 

Wheat-growing, chief difficulties 
of, 48; in the far North, 181- 



338 



INDEX 



183; general account of, in 
western Canada, 41-49. 

Wheat kernels, development of, 
from ovules, 218-221. 

Wheat Pit, the, at Winnipeg 
Grain Exchange, description 
of, 116-118. 

Wheat plants, development of, 
221-222; spring from fertil- 
ized eggs, 218-221. 

Wheat Scab, a disease of wheat, 
71, 178, 226. 

Wheats, cultivated, with a brittle 
rachis, 295. 

Wheeler, Seager, and a yield of 
Marquis wheat, 191; a visit to 
his farm, 269, 272-273; bio- 
graphical note upon, 274; hail 
destroys crops of, 268, 269; his 
Red Bobs at Indian Head, 185; 
origin of Kitchener and Red 
Bobs wheats, 226; origin of 
Red Bobs, 259, 262-268; selec- 
tion of Kitchener by, 275-277; 
sold White Bobs, 270; various 
selection work of, 273; wins 
prizes for wheat, 173-174. 

White Bobs wheat, at Rosthern, 
263-264. 

White Clawson wheat, and Daw- 
son's Golden Chaff, 224. 

White Fife wheat, a parent of 
Huron and Stanley wheats, 
149; a parent of Prelude 
wheat, 186-187; used for 
crossing, 148. 

White Horse Plains, death of 
Indians on, 26. 

White Russian wheat, replaced 
by Red Fife, 218, 227. 

Wild barley, evolution of, 294- 
295; its brittle rachis, 294. 

W^ild oats, evolution of, 294. 

Wild wheat of Palestine, a virile 
vegetable, 291; general ac- 



count of, 278-299; in United 
States and Canada, 291; not 
an escape from cultivation, 
289; rediscovery of, by Aaron- 
sohn, 286-291. 

Winds, and the shelling of 
wheat, 197; drying, and 
wheat-raising, 48, 176; hot, 
effect on wheat kernels, 199. 

Wind-mills, in Selkirk Settle- 
ment, 24, 27; metal-frame, 
138. 

Winnipeg, advantageous geo- 
graphical position of, 108-109; 
and loading platforms, 54; as 
center of grain inspection, 91; 
as converging point of the 
wheat funnel, 49; census of 
the village of, in 1870, 32; con- 
centration of inspection at, 78 ; 
daily car inspection at, 91; 
flour mills at, 134, 135; Grain 
Growers' Guide published at, 
142; grain prices at, 105; 
Grain Research Laboratory at, 
102; grain trains passing 
through, 59; introduction of 
the grading system into, 69; 
Red Fife wheat secured at, in 
1876, 216; short delay of grain 
trains at, 78, 84. 

Winnipeg Board of Trade, and 
the Survey Board, 97. 

Winnipeg Grain Exchange, an 
account of, 105-118; and 
Board of Grain Supervisors, 
128; and data upon damage 
from the rust disease, 180; 
Censoring Committee of, 121 ; 
Clearing House of, 109-116; 
closure of, 119; exhibition of 
loaves at, 103-104; geographi- 
cal position of, 108-109; 
highest price of wheat at, 121; 
grain inspection at, 78; Re- 



INDEX 



339 



ports of, 35-36, 41, 91, 105, 
106, 118-129; site once haunt 
of Passenger pigeons, 5; stops 
future trading in wheat, 122; 
wheat pit of, 116-118. 

Winnipeg Survey Board, and re- 
inspection, 97. 

Winnipeg wheat market, compe- 
tition of war buyers in, 124. 

Winter-spring wheat, at Seager 
Wheeler's farm, 273. 

Winter wheat, and Marquis, 
247-248; in Minnesota, 162, 
167; in western Canada, 41- 
42; sown at Red River Settle- 
ment in 1812, 1; yield of, in 
the United States, 193-196. 

Wisconsin, and Northwestern 
Dent corn, 190; and Red Fife 
wheat, 206; Marquis wheat in, 
164; seed \vheat from, con- 
veyed to Red River Settlement, 
13. 

Wittmach, on barley found at 
Troy, 297. 

Wood, cutting of, on farms, 139. 

Wood-lots, planting of, 140. 

Women, increase ranks of work- 
ers, 123; on farms, 140. 



Wyoming, Marquis wheat in, 
164. 



Y. 



Yellow Dent corn, origin of, 187- 
188. 

Yellow Stripe Rust disease, in 
England, 179. 

Yield of wheat, high, and earli- 
ness, 185; high, of Marquis 
155, 173; of Kitchener, 276 
of Marquis and Red Fife, 175 
of Marquis, and shelling, 197 
of Marquis in the United 
States, 192-196; of Marquis in 
western Canada, 190-192; of 
Red Bobs, 272; of Red Fife in 
Wisconsin, 206. 

Yukon, and Prelude wheat, 184. 



Z. 



Zavitz, C. A., on economic im- 
portance of 0. A. C. No. 21 
barley, 239; on origin of Daw- 
son's Golden Chaff wheat, 224. 



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